Birthday Post #01: A Brief History Of Me

In four days, we come across the most insignificant day of the year: my birthday. I gave up long ago making a big deal out of it, because it's usually very inconsequential to me. Also, many people don't realize how bad it is to have a birthday in May, schedule-wise. Having a birthday in November or December is bad for obvious holiday-related reasons. But the main culprits in May are graduations and weddings. Sometimes my birthday falls also on Mother's Day, like it did last year. Given how little patience I have for difficult scheduling, I just don't even bother to make plans.

However, having a birthday and a blog does give me a prize opportunity to be unapologetically self-centered and write about myself for a change, since we all know how leery I am about that (haha). So I think I'll write a series of birthday-related posts this week and we'll see how many of my readers are ready to put a gag on me at the end.

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I was born on May 14, 1977 in Cheverly, MD, a town which I have no recollection of, and have been meaning to visit, so I could tell people someday how I rose up out of the ghetto, with my black name and all. I was the first born in my family and blissfully enjoyed life as an only child for two years, until my first brother was born.
When I first started to speak, I was about three years old, at which point my first memory is me sitting in a La-Z-Boy chair, watching The Dukes of Hazzard in our apartment in New Jersey. I can only imagine that at that moment I was a) silently taking in everything around me, plotting my master plan to dominate the family structure; b) humming quietly because I was an infant genius utterly bored with my current company; c) or sitting, strapped to the chair, so I wouldn't fall down the stairs again.

I soon mastered English, once I realized that my mouth served a purpose other than chew and drool. I caught on to English so well that today I even have a blog. Woo-hoo.

I suppose I was a smart kid, pretty early. But due to the Asian parental academic pressure instilled in me since pre-school, I was pretty socially inept, which still holds true today.

After pre-school, we moved to Virginia and I was ready to take on the world. I entered Kindergarten at a public school near a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Waynesboro, VA. I breezed through Kindergarten with the best show-and-tells and an unhealthy obsession with The A-Team (you can see my tv habits were developed early). After Kindergarten, we moved to Charlottesville, where I would live for the next 12 years. In Grade 1, I began to learn about classroom politics and in my rebellious and stubborn nature, refused to take part.

In Grade 2, I got a tonsillectomy and went through a lot of complications that required me to go back to the hospital after I threw up blood (sorry if I grossed you out). In Grade 2, I also cried in the middle of class because Anna (I forget her last name) announced to the entire class that she had a crush on me.

I think in Grade 3, I began to fear my own genius. I was kind of a rebellious third grader, maybe because Ms. Locke was this evil bitch and I did not get along with her. I do remember that we did have a semi-sweet bonding session because for some reason when I was little, I really liked going to the dentist, and Ms. Locke used to be a dental assistant.

Grades 4-8 were pretty non-descript, defined really by my choices in wardrobe and as the sole Asian kid in my entire grade. I switched schools again in 4th grade when we moved out to this tiny town just outside of Charlottesville, that basically consisted of a post office. I graduated 5th grade as the front runner for the 5th grader of the year award, but lost to some other guy. It's a loss from which I still haven't recovered.

Things picked up in Middle School. I was at a new school and the New Kids On the Block were gods. I picked up the saxophone and was starting to learn of young teenage love. I had a "girlfriend" in Grade 7, if you could call it that. I think our high point was going to the movies together and then a month later, she unceremoniously dumped me. By the end of middle school, I had a great group of friends, including my best friend, Ryan Zackrisson, who I've lost touch with and no Google search has ever been able to come up with anything on him. I also had a crush on my 6th grade Social Studies teacher, Mr. Maher (I started gay at a young age, I guess.) I still remember on our 8th grade class trip, when he showed us his boxers because he was so proud of them, but now looking back I probably should have told our principal that our teacher was sexually harrassing us.

I left J.T. Henley Middle School as the Best Dressed Guy (voted by my classmates) and was forcibly switched to a private, quasi-Episcopalian (who are the wimpy Catholics) and rather snooty school. To this day, I feel bad about not keeping in touch with my public school friends, especially the aforementioned Ryan, and my Cub Scout buddy Cam Dirickson, who I had a brief reunion with at Kaplan SAT class. But I made some new friends including her (who really needs to update her blog one of these days) and him and him.

I got pretty good grades. Then I encountered Biology and stopped doing well in school. I became our school's resident trivia expert as captain of the Academic Team, which was fun in high school, but in college extremely dorky. I also got glasses and focused a little too much on my studies. I played on our high school tennis team as well as a few local tournaments (and one in Florida). I even won a few trophies, but more for Academic Team, than tennis. For some reason, I got really shy in high school, which is a trait that is stuck with me today.

I give college mixed reviews. I ended up having a single my Freshman year, because the person assigned to my dorm ended up going somewhere else. I joined Model UN, and am still pretty proud of my gavels (no, that's not a phallic metaphor). I was a little lost in college, both personally (I'm much too cynical to say "spiritually") and geographically. Penn was still in the midst of taking over West Philly, but the neighborhood was still definitely "not so good" with "not so good" people wandering around.

Graduation came and went. After that, I moved to New York where I lived in an assortment of apartments. I took a job at a law firm, and ended up staying there for six years. While I don't work there anymore, my career, I think, has been what you might call "stagnant." I also came out at age 26 and haven't looked back since.

That brings us to my life post-coming out, becoming an amateur gourmet, dating some cool guys, dating some really dumpy guys, traveling a bit, developing an unhealthy obsession with Canadian Maple Leaf Cookies and frequent flier miles, watching every episode of every show that J.J. Abrams ever made (Felicity, Alias, Lost, Six Degrees), and then in July 2005, while wallowing in self-pity from a broken arm, starting up a blog called TCho's World, which depressingly enough, may prove to be my crowning achievement. Unless, you count the time when I hit a ball with my racquet frame and the ball--I can't stress this enough--MIRACULOUSLY landed inside an empty tennis ball can, as if the hand of God had dropped it in there himself. Who I am kidding? Of course that's my piece de resistance. That will never happen again in the history of time.

In summation, 29 years, 361 days, no boyfriend, very little responsibility, an addiction to expensive shoes and really salty pickles, contact lenses, a somewhat odd collection of friends (one of whom still holds a grudge against Brad Pitt for leaving Jennifer) and an impressive scar that allows me to brag to all my friends about my bionic arm. I can see it now. 30 will be the best age for me since 29.