My Valentine’s Day:

Fuck bitches.

My Chinese New Year’s Day:

Get money.

Today is the eve of Chinese New Year/Lunar New Year/Vietnamese New Year/That Day Where All the Chinky-Eyed Folk Hand Out Red Envelopes Full of Money.  Per the request of my father, I went over to my Aunt’s house to have lunch with three of my Dad’s sisters and his brother.

I started attacking the food with my chopsticks but unintentionally faltered when I tried to deliver the food from bowl to mouth.

My Uncle asked me (in Vietnamese), “Do you know why you keep dropping everything?  …Because you didn’t light incense for your [deceased] Grandpa and now he’s not letting you eat.”

My Aunts and Uncle howled in laughter when my sister and I skipped out of our chairs to run up to our Grandparents’ altar.  He might have been joking, but I would like to believe that what he said is true.

It’s a nice thought… that my grandparents’ souls float around me, half to protect me, half to slap the food out of my hand when I forget to honor their memory.

After 2+ years of pouring my deepest, darkest, most humiliating and hilarious secrets into this blog, the day has arrived.

Mom finally stumbled across it.

Mouth agape by my most recent anecdote, she called me to question my antics and subsequently lecture me about said life choices.  I’m sure half her heart was begging that my vomiting was induced by food poisoning.  (Sorry, Ma, ‘twas the direct result of a weak stomach and large quantities of rum.)

I have to say, I’m relieved.  I know that no amount of wailing and whimpering can convince my Mom that at times, my hyperbole-tinged blogs are meant solely to entertain.  She can assume that I’m a mindless, alcoholic wild child, but I’m far from it.  And, if she was courageous enough to sift through the piles of crap that I blog, she will find that I do have some sensibility and a knack for observation.

I’m aware of how I present myself because of this blog and I’m proud of it.  Even if “it” involves a shameless display of complete dependency after overestimating my alcohol tolerance.

She calmly told me that she didn’t really have a drink until she was in her thirties and pointed out that I’ve just barely nicked nineteen.

But, Ma, you were raised Vietnamese… I’m American through and through.  Underaged drinking is practically written into the Constitution.

My memories from this past Saturday remain in my brain as a series of five freeze frames with no coherent connection between any of them.

1. I’m lying on someone’s doorstep, curled up in the fetal position, physically unaware of my emerging hypothermia and gravity’s efforts to blanket my body with precipitation.
2. With eyes closed, I feel myself lifted from the ground by a kind, heroic stranger, who, after he opens his mouth to mock me mercilessly, identifies himself to be none other than Greg.
3. I’m on a couch and confused as to why people keep throwing pillows and blankets at me.  I’m not cold, dammit.
4. I’m crouching over a toilet, attempting to empty my insides while Greg holds my hair and Elliot takes pictures to pocket for future blackmail.
5. I’m vomiting out everything I have, still strapped into Tammy’s car by the passenger seat belt, on the side of the Boulevard.

When I finally faced Greg again yesterday — partly thankful for his existence but mostly embarrassed about the way I behaved — I argued that if he had demanded that I stand up, I would have been physically capable of doing so.  He then informed me that the reason he chose to pick me up like a baby (refer to # 2) was because my skirt was cut rather high and the position I was laying in forced my vagina to practically spill out onto the concrete.

And # 3 only occurred because my attentive friends were desperately attempting to shield my lower half with various sofa accessories; pillow, throw, cushion.

Before you run off with the image of commando Jamie flittering about all willy-nilly, I have to clarify: I was wearing underwear.  However, the type I was sporting does directly fall under the ‘Granny’ category and to top it off, there was a pad attached.

Why, God, why.  Of all the days, why couldn’t I have been wearing somewhat attractive panties?  Of the three out of four weeks I’m not caught in the middle of the menstrual cycle, why couldn’t it have been that week?  This, after all, was and probably will be the one time that my lower half will be exposed for a while.

(That last sentence was a subtle reference to the fact that 50% of the world’s population has presumably shunned me as a possible mate, if you didn’t catch it.)

I’ve learned my lesson.

Ladies, always wear nice underwear.

I spent my Sunday cleaning, as I do most Sundays after the Chargers’ season prematurely ends.  Bathrooms, vacuum, bedroom, laundry, etc.

I transport the laundry from the dryer in two shifts because unfortunately, my arms aren’t long enough to wrap themselves around the entire pile of hot cotton.

Just two seconds ago, I took one half to my bedroom to fold.  Between the time I placed the lump onto my bed and turned around to gather the rest, I absentmindedly forgot that I had done this.  I took the second half of the laundry to my Dad’s room and folded it.

I got indescribably pissed after I walked past my bedroom and realized I was only halfway through playing maid for the household.  And, it was due to my own stupidity that it now seemed as if I had twice as much laundry weighing my to-do list down.

On an unrelated note, my Dad just asked me to cook dinner, but advised me to take all of the tennis balls out of the oven before I preheat it.

I think this entire family has taken too much Clorox to the dome.

In Communications yesterday, the class was asked to each individually get up and give a two minute speech about someone who has made him or her “look at [themselves] differently” or whatever.  While my class furiously scrawled their ideas onto paper in preparation, I propped my feet up on the desk in front of me and waited, confident that I wouldn’t have to volunteer.  The class, after all, was quite large for a “small section”.

3 minutes before class ended, my TA announced that we “have time for one more!”  And who does she volunteer?  “Jamie, let’s hear from you.”

I muttered, “Shit,” loudly and dragged my feet to the front of the room.  I stumbled through some bullshit about my overconfidence and laziness, until one day my Dad stopped me and said, “Yeah… you’re not as tight as you think you are,” which eventually evoked some type of work ethic in me.  I delivered that line hoping that humor would be my life-vest for it was clear that I was sinking quickly.

…I think I got one (?) chuckle out of the crowd.

When I was walking back to my seat I quickly slipped in, “If it weren’t for my Dad, I probably would be off prostituting myself or something.”

From that, I got a full chorus of gasps.

It’s usually difficult for people to understand my type of humor when they first meet me — actually, the first several times they meet me.  I’m slowly becoming a pro at coming off like a complete douche the first few weeks of each new semester.

I’m pretty sure my Comm class thinks I’m crazy.

I found out late last semester that not only was the joke of an English class I was enrolled in one I had already been accredited for, but my major of choice required a minor.  I was confined in the Academic Advising waiting room for thirty minutes just to have them slap me in the face.  Metaphorically, of course.

And while I was there, the only thing I had to pass the time was a stack of Forbes magazines lying on the table.  I’m assuming that they chose this particular subscription to inspire the many students of SDSU who file through that waiting room on the daily.  Y’know, let them all know that, “Hey!  Follow your dreams!  College is here for you to major in whatever you choose to pursue!  But, mu’fucka, whatever you choose better get you in this magazine, ‘cuz money makes the world go ‘round and shit.”

Thus begins my journey down Find Yourself Road.  I’ve planned out my next two semesters to systematically take a jab at each promising minor.  The first on my list of Minor Auditions: Theater Arts.  (Get it?  Auditions, theater arts?  I’m so clever.)

So I’m sitting in Little Theater 161, the locale of my newest endeavor.  This relatively normal guy comes in a little tardy and stumbles down the ramp to my particular row.  After not-so-gracefully stepping over my leather bag and French book, he plops himself down in the seat next to me.

About an hour into class, Charlie — I’ve decided to name him Charlie, go with me on this — bends over into his bag.  I glance over at Chuck but quickly return my attention to the front of the room, where my professor was enthusiastically shouting about Orson Welles.  Suddenly, through my peripheral vision, I notice that good ol’ Chuckaroo had whipped out a knife.

I don’t think he noticed my initial “WHAT THE FUCK” reaction as I kept the alarmed squeal inside my head but I’m sure he noticed my casual nudging to the gal on my left, attempting to make notice of what was happening about an inch to my right.

Then Charles took out an old fashioned wooden pencil and proceeded to go at it with the knife.

Should I run into my pal Charlie ever again, I’ve noted to have a pencil sharpener prepared with the intention of gifting it to him.  The guy scared the living daylights out of me for a whole five seconds.

But, had it been in the cards for me to die this young, I guess going out by getting shanked during theater class wouldn’t be a necessarily uninteresting way to go about it.