How Ransom Came Into The World (version 2.0)

It had been 12 hours since Amy woke me up that morning to tell me she was having contractions. That was 2 in the morning. I was just coming out of my delirious state of sleep and Amy wasn't 100% confident that she was really having THE contractions but she did feel like something was changing inside her. Although our soon-to-be-born baby boy was still warm and comfortable inside his mother's womb, we had gotten pretty accustomed to his "personality" and were not the slightest bit surprised that the day of his induction would be when he would choose to come out on his own.

Amy's fever had gotten worse and we had been pushing for hours. I say "we" because each time she had to push, I couldn't help but push myself and was doing it so much that Amy was afraid I would pass out from lack of air intake. Maybe it was a natural reaction like when you are in the passenger side of the car and the car in front of you brakes suddenly and you push your foot to the floor looking for a brake pedal that isn't there. Amy says it's because I love her so much but that would seem too simple.

The nurse had told me that she had seen the top of our boy's head poke out a few times aleady and said that we were so close. I tried to see it during one of the pushing rounds but was so distracted by trying to help Amy get through the pushing that I wasn't able to see anything.

It had been 12 hours since I drug myself out of bed to get all of our baby day gear together and loaded into the car. I wanted to make sure, just in case this was indeed the real thing and we didn't have to wait for our 10 o'clock appointment for inducing, that I didn't forget anything. We had our clothes, books, a deck of cards, snacks (for me and some for Amy to sneak into her mouth when the nurse was not around),games and our baby's first change of clothes and his car seat for the joyous ride home. 12 hours and Amy was exhausted, fever still hot and no baby to show for it and I still could not keep myself from breathing and pushing too hard myself.

Doctor Ford had just recently joined us. Up until about 2 hours prior, it was just Amy, me and our nurse. Pushing. Taking a break. Pushing. Taking a break. Every contraction, about a minute or two apart, push! No baby. Take a break. Oops, the line on the graph is going up again. Push! No baby. Take a break. Enter Doctor Ford. We had wanted Ransom to be born on May 21st so that he could share a birthday with his father. Partially because I felt like it would be a nice bonding detail for us, but more importantly, since I am adamant that I do NOT want to celebrate my birthday ever again (and if anyone ever tried, let them know that that day they will rue) having a son born on the same day would be a good distraction from my own day of birth. Unfortunately, Doctor Ford also had a son with the birthday of May 21st, she wanted to have us induce the day before so she could spend the next day with her own son. We obliged but both Amy and I know deep inside our hearts that if we had waited, he would have been born on the 21st naturally because the contractions wer far enough apart that without the induction procedure, he may have waited until after midnight to come out.

The doctor told us it was time to bring in the vaccuum. I had never heard of the use of a "vaccuum" before but seeing how Amy was still growing hotter and hotter and grew more tired by each contraction, I agreed to anything they could do to speed up the birth and relieve her of the pressure.

Amy's legs were propped up on the stirrups and the big flood lights came in, the extra nurse stood by and the vaccuum pump thing was ready. COntraction. Amy pushed. I counted (and pushed). No baby. Breath. Short rest. Push! No baby. A couple more times and the intensity grew more and more.

I was getting lightheaded from my sympathy breathing/pushing and Amy looked like she was going to just collapse. The doctor thought it would be any moment. The line graph starting rising again and the next round of pushing started. I saw the vaccuum pump disappear under the sheet around Amy's legs and as Amy pushed her hardest ever, she began to cry a painful cry (I learned later that an incision had to be made to allow more room for the baby to come out) but the doctor encouraged her not to stop and I looked over the sheet and saw a small head poking out between Amy's legs. It was the back of his head and the full head of hair was plastered down to his head. I turned to Amy who seemed delirious and coaxed her to push hard, just once more. She let a strong gasp and pushed and I saw Ransom slide out into Doctor FOrd's hands, in which she reflexively tossed his limp 8 pound 6 ounce body onto Amy's tummy.

He laid there quietly and the room seemed to fall silent. Everything was in slow motion and I was holding Amy's hand, leaning against her head. We both stared in awe at the calm, still grey baby lying on Amy's tummy. And then there was a cough. And then a cry. A single cry that broke what seemed like hours of silence that passed in a mere moment. Then all the sound rushed back into my ears and I cried along with my newborn son. Amy was crying. Ransom was crying. And I cried to Amy, "He's beautiful! He's beautiful! You did such a good job! I love you! I love him!"

Amy smiled a weak yet approving smile, allowing me to leave her side to go over to Ransom, who was not on a table, under a light, to be cleaned up and checked out. I walked over to the table where he cried quietly. I must have been in so much awe of how beautiful he was because I don't remember the crying stopping. I just suddenly realized he was not crying anymore. He was lying on his back, with a slight tilt of his head, looking outward and I could already see in his eyes that he was a smart boy. His eyes were open and his brow scrunched in the middle. The same look that I had been known to make when I was deeply in thought. I was amazed how aware his face seemed and I loved him. I wanted to grab him and take him over to Amy but I knew that the nurse had to finish what she had to do and did not want to risk messing any of her work up.

Now, at 11 and a half weeks later, as Ransom lays quietly in the other room, now sleeping through the entire night, I am reminded of that first night with him. Both Amy and I exhausted from little to no sleep and with him practically waking up every hour, we knew it would take a lot out of us but we did not care. He was now here was us and missing out on a day or two's sleep was not a big deal to us at that moment. Once again, he sleeps through the night now and we, too, get a full night's sleep each night now, but there is a part of me that misses that 3 in the morning time with him when he woke up then for feeding. It was a special time where he and I bonded, just the two of us. But I am cool with it.

This Wednesday, it will be 12 weeks after that night Amy woke me up and told me she thought she was having contractions. 12 weeks after that glorious baby's day out. And now, I have a lifetime ahead of me and I only fear that it will go by too quickly.

Future Dreams

Amy and I were having a wonderful day, walking in the park. The evening had quietly crept into the late afternoon and the dark sky above told us that it was getting late and we probably needed to turn back to our car before it got too dark. We were just passing a physical fitness facility when Amy decided she needed to make a pit stop before we began our walk back to the parking lot to begin the long drive back home. I waited outside as she went into the facility to use their restrooms. I wandered ahead, staring up at the sky to count the stars. It was right about that time when I saw the brightest shooting star I had ever seen. It glowed a bright whitish yellow with a wide tail that seemed to permanently mar the sky with its searing glow. What made this shooting star even more intriguing was that unlike other shooting stars I had seen in the past, this one did not get smaller and did not fade out into the night. In fact, the more I watched it, the brighter and larger it got. Just in my peripheral, I catch a glimpse of another shooting star coming from the opposite direction, this one not so brilliant and simply left a long white, smoky tail behind it. When my eyes finally adjusted to the second star, I realized it was not a star at all but a jet fling across the night sky. It was then when I realized the first star was the same, but that one was actually on fire. At this point of realization, I notice that both "stars" were flying straight towards each other, eventually colliding into each other. My eyes blink in horror as my body freezes up in shock from what I could not believe I just saw. Everything around seems to have stopped in time and I just stand there not sure of what to do.

And then, snap! I come to. I feel the life returning to my legs and my mind releases itself from the awe-struck state was in. I see that the fireball that was once the two "stars" is no longer hovering in space and time above me but was now falling to the earth, on a direct path towards the fitness facility that Amy had gone into. I jump and begin running towards the building to warn her and get her out. I consider calling her but can't seem to locate my phone. The air feels warmer as the flaming fireballs gets bigger and bigger as it plummets towards the building. I estimate that I am about 200 feet away from the building, the fireball even further but falling at a much faster rate than I was running. I see the front doors and push my legs even harder to get inside to find Amy but before I can take another step, I feel my body go limp and I am thrown backwards, landing on the back of my neck. The breath is knocked out of me and I begin coughing. The Coughing stabs at my chest and each cough rings in my ears, barely drowning out the remaining sounds of the explosion that had pushed me to the ground. When I am finally able to get up on my feet and turn around, I see the remains of the building, a charred fiery skeleton of what it once was, no survivors in sight. A call out to Amy with the sinking feeling that I would not be hearing any response ever again.

I gasp and reach over to Amy who is lying next to me in our bed.. She later tells me
that when I woke from my sleep, I was breathing heavily and immediately placed my hand on her belly, reaching for our unborn child. She comforted me and reassured me it was just a dream and eventually I am able to calm down and go back to sleep.

I find it interesting that we dream. I know that we can never really truly explain why we dream what we do and why our brains decide to project different images in our heads as we sleep. But the one thing I have come to terms with is that no matter what I dream, I have to keep in mind that on the most part, our dreams are merely replaying things in our heads that we have been thinking about, memories of the past or simply something we were exposed to. The mind's eye is limitless and can see whatever it wants to see. But the part that I feel really strongly about, the part I will argue about to no end is my belief that for most of us, if not all of us living today, our mind is limited to what it already knows. What that means is that I don't believe that our dreams peek into the future.

I heard a co-worker speaking the other day about how she knew when she was pregnant, before she had her ultrasound and was told she was having a girl, she already knew she was having a girl because her baby girl spoke to her in a dream. Apparently, she had a dream where a little girl approached her and said to her, "Mommy, I am a girl." This was what told her that she was having a girl and that was why she was not surprised when the ultrasound tech revealed it to her. Now, based on my hypothesis, I guess technically, this is possible because even though she may not have been able to look at the child on her own her accord and know that she was a girl, her mind may have already known it deep inside her brain because her mind is connected to her, at the time, unborn child, thus possibly subcosciously already knew the gender. But based on this example, that does not support anyone outside of the mother being able to know what the child is going to be. Anyone outside of the mother is merely guessing and having a strong sense of confidence in their guess. But that is adifferent discussion altogether.

Getting back to dreams, though, I believe in the historical accounts of Joseph and his dreams telling him that he would one day be a leader and that many would bow down to him. I believe in the dreams that other prisoners in the jailcell that Joseph was in, telling them that one of them would be forgiven while the other would be killed. I even believe that the pharaoh at the time did indeed dream about the foretelling of a coming famine in which Joseph was able to translate and prepare them for well before it happened. But I don't believe that God talks to us that way anymore. I'm not saying that believe that God CAN'T speak to us this way but merely statng that I believe that he DOES NOT speak to us this way today. At the time of Joseph and the many others who God spok to in dreams or through visiting angels or burning bushes, there was no Word so that was what was needed in order for God to communicate with us. Today, the Bible is how God speaks to us so there is no need for dream speaking or future telling through our mind images. In fact, having stated this, I find it hard to believe that God would use this great communicating ability to merely tell us what gender our child would be or that we would be late for work next week because of a car accident. The events in the Bible where God spoke directly to humans to prepare them for the future were always phenominal events, big outcomes. It would just seem silly that he would go from telling the virgin Mary that she would be carrying the Son of God in her womb to merely making it easy for to know whether or not we should choose pink curtains or blue ones for our baby room.

But what about people who have declared that they have dreamt about big things? Huge premonitions? I don't know. I just don't see it. I am more willing to accept that
someone's mind just so happened to coincidentally insert your images into your head
that later resembled something that happened later than I am willing to believe that God spoke to that person to give him/her insight on something that was going to happen in the future. The reason for this is because all the accounts in the Bible where God spoke to someone in a dream, the dream made it possible for that person to make a difference in the future. Why would God merely give someone a sneak peek into the future realm merely for them to see it happen later on television in the news with no way of using that information to help affect the future? It would be a waste of time. Here's an example of what I am talking about.

In 2001, around August 20th or so, I had a dream that I was flying a plane. One of
those small cargo-type planes with just room for a few passengers. There was a guy on the plane holding a gun to my head and forcing me to fly the plane into a building. I remember not wanting to do it and eventually steering the plane into a mountain or something. I remember telling Amy about this in passing and didn't think much about it. About three weeks later, two planes crashed into the Twin Towers in New York, killing many and changing the way the Us of A thought about their safety here in the States from that point on. If I didn't feel strongly about my belief in dreams today do not predict the future, I would have been a nervous wreck thinking that God was telling me there was going to be an attack and I did nothing about it. But that isn't what I believe. In fact, I can guarantee you that there are probably a good handful of other people who may have had dreams loosely similar to the attacks prior to them happening. So what does that mean? It means that a group of people had dreams conjured up in their minds based on their own experiences whether in life or something they read or saw on TV or whatever, driven by anxiety, anxiousness or merely the mind just replaying information for the sake of doing so, but just so happens to resemble the events of 9/11. Mere coincidence and has nothing to do with being psychic or God talking to them about the future.

Now, with dreams, I do believe that you can affect the future by using your dreams but I am talking more about the fact that you can also affect the future by analyzing your past. You can see where you made mistakes or where you may need to rethink something or you just have been distracted from the truth because of all the other things you have to deal with in life. Dreams can be used as an avenue for your mind to replay things going on in your life right now and can put together little dramas directly connected to those existing feelings and thoughts. Your mind may be visually showing you that you are nervous for a test or that your relationship with a friend is on the rocks or that you are hungry. But it is all based on the events of now and events of the past. The dream may show images of possibilities for the future based on existing knowledge but I really do not believe our dreams will show us the TRUE future as it will be. I do not believe our minds will show us the inevitable.

So, what does this mean for us today? For me, at least, it means that I can keep
talking about my dreams and I can keep analyzing what they mean but I cannot use that information to set a unchangeable precedence for the future-yet-to-come. My dreams are not telling me the future and I am not ready to believe anyone else has that ability today. I can muse over other’s interpretations and see where a dream is telling something about themselves today but as for the future, it isn't yet written and, well, if anyone what the outcomes will be from the events of today, I just don't think it is any of us.

Okay, enough about this. I will lay this one down to rest. Sweet dreams, everyone.

"This world sucks."

There is theft, dishonesty and depression in this world. It is laced with deception, murder, rape and perversion. Babies are killed every day through the heartless acts of abortion and middle-aged men are stealing from senior citizens. Another teacher is sent to prison for having sexual relations with her 13-year old student. Brothers and sisters having babies.

Okay, we get it. It's a pretty scary world we live in.

But get this. I'm about to let you in on a little secret that very few people these days are fully aware of. Now don't go spreading this around too much because it will completely throw off the balance of this world and every little drama queen and king will not have anything to talk about.

There is still good in this world.

That's it. That's my point. But, alas, I find these days it's very hard to find people interested in the good things happening in this world. Of course, a statement like this will get the naysayers going on about how "you can't hide the bad things in life. That won't make it go away." That's a good point. Glad to hear that because if that were the case, all the good things in the world would no longer exist because everyone seems to be hiding that. Maybe that's why negative people tend to forget to talk about the good things. Maybe it's because they have neglected the good things for so long that they have forgotten that every day someone is caring for a helpless friend; a father is helping her daughter to believe she is beautiful; a child is protecting a smaller child from a bully; a grandmother is taking in a stray puppy who has been hanging around her house for the last week. If that is the case, what is there to do about it?

Well, for starters, for those of you who insist in looking towards the bad things in life, forcing it on others, well, I get the point. I know there is bad in this world and no amount of your neverending bombartment of depressing stories, tragic anecdotes and woeful banter will cause me to buckle to the school of "man, this worlds sucks." We know. We know. Now get over it. For pete's sake, if this world is in such shoddy condition, is it not even more astounding, amazing, just plain awesome that something good is happening in this world? Heck, we should all be going on and on about that act of goodness because it's apparently so rare because people very rarely talk about it.

But I don't blame the whole lot of them, those naysayers. I blame the media. That oh-so-reliable news media that I can trust to bring me the real-life happenings of every day without the slightest hint of sensationaliasm or liberal biases. I blame them for making a story about a tragic outcome something bigger than it really is. I blame them for telling the same negative story after negative story at 6 o'clock and then again at ten. Only to be supported by print and radio. That's all that is happening in this world. Bad, bad, bad, bad things. Nothing good ever happens here. Nah, we've got nothing. The funny thing is, if you start paying attention to those very informative news stories and start grouping them into categories, you'll find that the categories are very few and taking out the different names and locations, you start thinking, "Hey, wait. Didn't I just hear this story last week?" That's because that's what they do. They take the same tragic story that garnered so many reactions and seek out a similar story because they know that we peons will forget we just heard that story a week ago and will be overly shocked again the very next week and we will go and tell everyone about it again. And again.

And now, amidst all this election brouhaha, well, it just seems to become more concentrated as far as the subject matter goes. Just once I would like to walk into a break room and hear someone say to someone else, "Your candidiate did some not so nice things but my candidate also did some not so nice things. Never mind that. Let's talk about something positive." Are we all truly shocked that the candidates have made mistakes in their pasts? Yes, I know it's important that we understand the background of our soon-to-be leaders but really, is digging up old dirt really that beneficial? Are we at all that surprised when we hear that one of the candidates (heck, always BOTH candidates) have done something not so stellar? And then we attribute it to who that candidate is today. But that only applies for the candidate that we do not support. When it is that person, we are realy quick to accept the tarnishment and all jump aboard to cry, "wolf!" but when it is one of our own, the very one that we have talked up so much in the past months, we have to do some research. We have to dig deep to make sure that this information is definitely not true. And we are even willing to accept the most minute, shoddy excuse we can find to say, well, that was then and I am sure (s)he's sorry now and there was a misundertanding and that was someone else. Look, just like my statement about all the other bad things that people tend to get obsessed with squawking about, it happens. Get over it.

But the big question now is if our candidates are inevitably going to have done bad things in the past (and may even be doing them now) and the world is filled with the bad things happening everyday, what are we supposed to do about? Is there any hope?

Well, there is. And the hope is in each one of us doing whatever the heck we can to counteract it. Where something bad is happening in this world, you can cancel it out by doing something good. Heck, do two good things and that will get you one step ahead of the bad thing. Yes, yes, I know this sounds like ridiculous fodder and is oversimplified to the point that it seems like a joke, but I mean it. We all have accepted the idea that negative stuff is going on but does it do anyone any good to be a supporter of it. Yes, I said supporter. When you go around and spread the word about how bad this world is, you are not doing anything to help rid the world of the bad. You are merely reinforcing the fact that this world sucks. You think you are making people aware and that it will help fight it but you will find that a lot of us are scared little children and when we get our heads filled with all this negatively, we begin to lose hope and only want to crawl into a hole and hopes it all ends quickly and when the world explodes, it won't hurt so bad. You see, you're only feeding the beast when you go around spreading the plague further. Negative attitudes breed more negative attitudes and can be like a flaming line of dominoes all falling over and withering away and dying instead of doing what they can to stop it.

So, again I say, be positive. Embrace being positive. I'm not saying you have to pretend this is a perfect world, because it is not. But you can acknowledge it as such and pray it gets better and then stop the spreading of the germ that can eat us all up from the inside if we let it. Does that make sense?

Okay, I'm going to stop being negative now.

Trusting oneself vs. Trusting God (a short observation)

We are flawed human beings.

We are fallen creations of God.

This being said, we cannot trust our own instincts because we are selfish creatures who can and will manipulate the natural instincts that God provided us, hence making the instincts tainted and no longer something we can trust.

We can only trust God.

Brutal Honesty (hold the Brutal, please)

“Brutal honesty,” he called it. “A person can learn so much more about himself through brutal honesty. None of this pussyfooting around with how-do-you-do’s and if-you-don’t-minds. F@ck that sh*t.” My brother had always been a bit on the coarse side. Having spent the last twelve years of his life in the army, his coarseness has only become more – how shall we say – brutal. This was his third tour in Iraq and having him back home – even only for a few short weeks to meet his newborn son for the first time – was refreshing, if not jarring. From the not-so-subtle reminder of how abrupt and straight to the point he could be, with each conversation we had – whether it be about politics, social issues, or how we disagreed on whether or not Quentin Tarantino movies would leave a mark in the history of filmmaking – I was reminded of my decision I had made in 1997 to do everything I could possibly do to not contribute to the continual onslaught of negativity that was being force fed to the world on a daily basis, through all channels of life.

Growing up Asian American in Northwest Arkansas gave me many reasons to be angry – many reasons to feel hate and to carry the biggest chip on my shoulder that my skinny little 11 year old frame could support. When you are a Vietnamese/Korean boy in a school where the ratio of Caucasians students to ethnic students was 100 to 1, and the ratio of those students who made slant-eyed faces and “ching chong” noises to you every day was 10 to 1, you learned to harbor some hateful thoughts and think the most destructive ideas your unlimited childhood imagination could conjure up, most of which involving laser neutralizers and/or chainsaws, and three quarters of the students on the playground. I even remember many of their names: Grant, Tommy, David, Eddie, Sally, Danny, Todd, Tim, Denise, Jason, Lissa, Carol, Tammy, Dawn, Geneva, Missy, Denver, Stephen, and I could go on and on. Best I don’t. It’s bad enough that these names have stuck in my mind after all these years. No need to bring back the negative thoughts and painful memories that were once suppressed but more importantly, were finally released from the deep recesses of my childhood mind when I came to the realization during that trip back to Saigon in 1997 that negativity – hate, guilt, anger, self-pity, revenge – would only plague my heart and could only lead to defeat in the grand scheme of life.

Even though I cringed every time Grant called me “gooky boy” and blushed each time Denise would tell me that the cutest girl in school liked me because “she likes Chinese food”, the childhood tauntings weren’t as bad as the insults and sneers that I got from adults. Looking back, I, to this day, cannot imagine how a grown man – let’s say in his mid to late 30’s – could be driving down the road in his blue and primer grey colored pickup truck, with his two buddies, and see a 11 year old Asian boy on his red Raleigh Racer dirt bike riding down the side of the road, and decide to honk his very loud, obnoxious horn at the young boy – shaking up the boy causing him to nearly fall off the bike and into traffic – then speeding by (while the boy’s ankles fumbled to regain footing on the pedals as he cried that no one would kill him) and laughing and calling to the child, “Go back where you came from, you yellow-skinned chink!” One of many incidences in my life that added insult to injury to my already hate-stained mistrust for adults and Americans in general. One of many moments that told me that in order to make it in this world, I would have to toughin’ up and attack first before anyone else attacked me.

In my teens, I became more sure of myself (at least, at the time, I thought I was). My yellow skin stayed yellow but became thick, my attitude even thicker. The insults didn’t stop coming. The only difference was that I now could throw them back at the assailants, only more quickly and even more brutally. With every “What kind of a dog did you have for dinner last night, Chihuahua or Poodle?” I would immediately quip back with, “I'm sorry, I missed dinner. I was too busy paying your mom for the h@ndj@b she gave me last night.” Most of the time, this would be enough to get them off my back. Other times, I ended up on my back instead, bruised and hurting but feeling proud inside that I did not back down. Eventually my reputation for holding my own granted me amnesty and I was no longer the target of ridicule and actually became accepted in many circles. The only thing was that in doing so, in order to obtain this acceptance and place of honor with all sects of high school social ladders, I lost my heart and tainted my soul. I had become cynical and hateful and this plagued my behavior all through my college years. I found that as I got older and as more ethnic groups began migrating to Northwest Arkansas, the racism faded away and that chip on my shoulder eventually fell off, but it was replaced by the naïve idea that I was untouchable and that I could do no wrong.

As I got bored with college and even more bored with myself, I branched out for other ways to express my cynical feelings and to make it more known how much contempt I had for the world. I found my release in a band called the Soda Pop Gods. Made up entirely of old schoolmates, all of which who shared the same ideas about life that I had developed and had gone from loser high school slackers to A-list cool guys due to the explosion of grunge and the acceptance of that who-gives-a-flying-flip lifestyle that we all lived, SPG became the biggest local band to hit Fayetteville since, well, whoever held that spot before we did. Our rock-stardom made us huge, ours egos a hundred times that. With such a captive audience for me to take advantage of, I wrote songs that pushed how terrible life was and how if you weren’t working your ass off to do your part in society, you were better off dead. And eventually the songs no longer tried to rally the troops for our cause but focused more on how if you weren’t a Soda Pop God, you weren’t spit. I was getting out of hand and it took a three-day tour with fellow ska/punkers Gals Panic for me to realize that I was way out of my league and it was about time someone slapped me across my headstrong yellow cheeks and wake me the hell up.

On the tour, internal fighting spawned by inflated egos began to tear the band apart. The biggest egos in the band, Billy the drummer and yours truly, spewed venom at each other between gigs and with neither of us willing to back down, eventually, after the end of the tour, I called it quits, with only guitarist Bob on my side, the Soda Pop Gods were no more and I was left questioning what the hell I had been preaching all this time.

It was between the years of 1995 to 1997 that two events changed my life: I was asked to front the band Kung-Fu Grip and my mother asked me to take a trip back to Saigon, Vietnam with her. The first of which, the easier of the two, put the wheels into motion. The latter sealed the deal.

My experience with the Soda Pop Gods left a bad taste in my mouth and since I was about to be singing again with that very same orifice, I decided it was time to take a dose of two bars of soap orally and clean up my act. The guys of Kung-Fu Grip agreed to my terms of writing only positive, fun songs and I agreed to my own goal to only stay in the band as long as it remained positive and fun-driven. This I did and during the five years with KFG, we were able to surpass the popularity of the Soda Pop Gods with the idea that life was too hard to be wasting worrying about tomorrow and more importantly, that life was already too angry as it was so why add to the hate when you can actually fight back with positivity and eventually overcome all the hate. A good start indeed but my newfound philosophy in life was incomplete and it wasn’t until I set foot on the other side of the planet that I realized what that missing piece was.

1997, Saigon. I had hesitated returning to my birth place for many years out of a disillusioned idea that in order to make it in America, I would have to become more Americanized. And in order to do that, I had no need for my family’s heritage and no use for reconnecting with the land that I had left as an infant some 23 years prior. Of course, time has told and that telling was the clincher that tore through my cocoon and let my new improved self free.

I had felt like life had dealt me a bad hand (a three, a seven, two jokers and the rules of play card) up to that point and that if I hadn’t been so stubborn, I would only have lived in misery. But all the things in my life that had contributed to the misery – the racial tauntings, the bad relationships with former friends and girlfriends, the boring life I had in Northwest Arkansas – suddenly became ludicrous and meaningless when I saw how the citizens of Saigon, Vietnam lived their daily lives. Although there were improvements to the country since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 (the year my mother, older brother and I fled the country), they were still not well-off. The Vietnamese people still struggled for food and shelter and worked hard, long hours doing very manual labor earning in one week about a tenth of what the average American earned on an hourly basis. The streets were dirty, the people were poor. Sanitation was horrific, medical was a joke. Politics confused. Police corrupt. All this on a daily basis and most of the citizens that touched my life there still had enough dignity to greet me with a broad smile and a genuinely heartfelt, “We love America”. Those three words reminded me that I, too, loved living in America but was not feeling so good about myself. I had bitched and moaned in my early teens about the cheap shoes that my mother had bought for me every other year for school or hid my face in shame as my father drove up in our old beat up van each day to pick us up at the high school. And even into my college years, I complained about having to work 32 hours a week to pay for college and that many other students’ parents paid for everything for them and why I couldn’t have that luxury. Each incident that flashed through my head as I took that last step back onto the plane my final day in Vietnam that year stuck deep into my heart and it was then that I decided to see that every one of those spikes were removed from my soul before I stepped foot back onto American soil.

It hasn’t been easy – still isn’t – but now each morning when I have to stare back into those deep brown eyes that anchor my round face, as I wash off the night’s dreams and clear the sand out of my eyelids, I can see clearly into my own soul and know my place in this world. As I put on my pants and put one leg in at a time (just like everyone else), I remember that God has been telling me something every day of my life, something about who I am and who I am meant to be, and although it has taken me many years to understand that message, I now know that the negativity will always remain here on this Earth but that is no reason why I have to be a contributor to it. And although one person cannot take away all the hurt and pain, even the most minute effect a single kind gesture or polite nod can produce is more than anyone can ask for and means a whole lot more to someone out there, and if I can be the one to offer that, I gladly accept the challenge. Brutal honesty can indeed teach us all a lot about ourselves but just imagine how much nicer it would be if that learning process could do without the brutal and simply be more honest.

Epilogue: I think we all pretty much go through some kind of spiritual journey each day of our lives. Whether it be religious or merely just rediscovering ourselves (for the fourteenth time that day) the things you go through, the thoughts you think of, the very actions you choose to make (or accidentally make) – are part of this spiritual building. As a Christian, I can only hope and pray that what drives a person to bettering himself by bettering others’ lives is Christ in them, but if one without Christ can begin their palate by wanting to bring happiness in this world then that is a great start. Whether or not anyone else reading my essay changed their views on Christianity after reading this is not the point (although I try to lead by example so if this did make a difference in the right direction, I would be ecstatic). If at least one person walked away from this feeling better – feeling more positive about life – then my work here is done. But it’s not over yet. I can’t ever say, “I made one person happy, I can now rest.” This essay has been very beneficial in helping me remember my path here and adds yet another building block to my goal.

Faith

Let’s talk about Faith. This is a subject matter that I have had to deal with a lot lately and not only in my own ability to have faith but in being exposed to other people’s own challenges with having true, unconditional, open-minded faith. Merriam Webster defines faith as:

(1): belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2): belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2): complete trust

Although Merriam Webster is far from Gospel (in the very literal sense, that is), I do believe they have a point here: firm belief in something for which there is no proof. No proof. If you have actual, solid “earthly” proof and that is what you need to have Faith, then you really are not having any Faith at all. In fact, the very idea that some of us will claim Faith in something and then seek out proof of that thing already cancels out the claim that there is Faith in that thing. When someone seeks out an answer – a definite right-before-your-eyes answer – you are not practicing Faith. You are practicing your own earthly ability to try and control Faith.

Ideally, we as humans – we as Christians – should be able to ask God for answers, ask God for help, ask God to show you the way, then move on. Move on and continue living your life in the pursuit of being closer to God. That pursuit is a path and if you truly believe in God, you have no reason to get off of the path and revisit that prayer just to make sure God has answered it. Granted, you should continue praying and continue asking God for help but the quest for control should stop at that point. When you ask God for something, God WILL give you an answer and the last thing God needs is for you to micromanage his work and to make sure that he follows through on it. I think that is the greatest roadblock for us as Christians when it comes to our Faith. We tell ourselves we have Faith, we testify to others we have Faith, we declare to God we have Faith, but then we feel the need to remind God that we have given ourselves to him and, well, just in case he got busy and didn’t catch it the first time, we want to check back in and see what God is doing and if he has had the chance to get to your request. Is that the kind of Faith God really wants from us?

My current career revolves around everyone and their dog asking me or my team to complete tasks for them. All requests for projects come to me and I manage whether or not a project request is really what the requester needs and if it meets that requirement, I schedule it to be completed. If a project is deemed as unreasonable or not at all the solution to the challenge, I offer an alternative – sometimes more than one alternative – and once the requestor understands how the alternative is actually a better solution to their challenge, I see that it is completed. There are two types of requestors that I have to deal with on a daily basis: 1)Those who know what I can do and what my team does and simply request the projects and get on with their own businesses, knowing that by the date promised (often times sooner), that project will get completed without them ever having to check in on my team or stop by my desk every hour to check on the progress. 2) Then there are those who ask for a request, send emails all day long to me seeing where my team is on the request, calling my desk to make sure my team hasn’t forgotten about the request, pulling me out of meetings to make sure I have everything I need to complete the request, coming by my desk to make changes to the request, and sometimes, in the end, realizing the request was not what they needed after all and cancelling the request after dragging the timeline well past the original completion date and exhausting everyone else’s time, while asking for a new request to make up for their unsatisfied state with the previous request. Which one of those types do you think has gotten more 100% satisfaction from my team?

There was a time where I would ask God, after having prayed for something multiple times, why he hasn’t answered my prayer or what am I doing wrong that may be preventing the answer from coming to me. Those were not productive times for me. I made a lot of mistakes. I caused others to stumble from my own misinterpretation of what I thought was the truth. I did not have Faith. Although I am still no where near where I need to be, I have grown a lot since that time. I have realized that those times when I would challenge God and call him out to be accountable for where he did not help me, that all along, as I wasted his time with my inability to see the truth, that he did answer my prayers and he did give me what I needed. But just in a way that I was not expecting. And that was the problem, I made a request to God and I made an expectation of God and in doing so, if God did not answer my prayer the way I wanted it answered, then I assumed that he did not listen and was being unreasonable. How foolish I was. Granted, I know I am still only a foolish human being now but one that has a better idea of what Faith is and of what God expects from me, not vice versa.

Control. The ironic thing about “control” is that if you put control in the hands of a child, your car will steer off the road and possibly kill you and everyone else in the car. You cannot allow an immature being to be in total control of any complex machine because that being will not know what to do if that machine goes awry and not function the way the being expects it to. Life is the most complex machine we as humans will ever know in our mortal state. You may be able to train yourself to better drive that car straighter on the highway or better guide that paint brush more smoothly onto the canvas but not a single one of us will ever be able to fully control Life. Even with the ability to steer a car perfectly between the broken white lines on the highway, all it takes is another car with less control to cause the both of you to go careening over the edge of the cliff into a fiery explosion of pure chaos. You can control aspects of your life but do you really have total control of it? And if not, how can you even pretend to think you can control others’? And do you really want to? How many “others” would you have to control in order to make sure that this Life goes the way you think it is supposed to? And what happens if someone else’s idea of “supposed to” contradicts yours? The only real control that we can perfect that will guarantee perfect results every time is Faith. If we can completely, entirely put our Faith in God and at that point, let go of “control”, things will be running a lot smoother than they have ever run in the past.

Human beings from day one have always had the wonderful ability to be unpredictable. The awesome power of freewill has always been a blessing but because we are humans and we are not God, that very blessing has given us the ability to make it into a curse. When God created Man, he created a beautiful thing. Far more beautiful than any other creature or object that he had ever created. Here is a being that not only eats and sleeps like any other animal, and loves and pleases like other animals…this being can choose not to do any of those things. God could have made us where we would merely exist and go through our routines like fish do or dogs or deer but he had already done that. He already made cats, he already made trees. Would it really have been that spectacular for God, after creating hermit crabs and dolphins and rabbits and moray eels to have created Man if he merely existed on this Earth as a reactive creature? Well, yes, because God would have created it and it would have been good. But God, the almighty Creator, is a creative person. After creating the duck-billed platypus, it was time to create something even more awesome. And the one element that made Man so much more awesome than a mammal that lays eggs was to create a creature that could think for itself and have the freewill to decide not to do the things God created him to do. Man was a perfect creation. Man was not perfect.

And being not perfect, any idea that Man creates can be flawed. This does not mean that we cannot come up with great ideas. We have. It was through the use of Man’s mind that we were able to utilize electricity to power whole nations. It was through Man’s use of his fleshly brain that we are able to fly from one country to another. It was through Man’s ingenuity that we can pinpoint the exact point when a single strand of DNA can determine what color our eyes will be. But it was this same Man that was able to use the same mind that created all of these wonderful advances in science that we were able to create an atom bomb and make the decision to drop it on Hiroshima. With this knowledge, does this not seem logical that any idea that Man comes up with can be questioned? Asking this question, does it not dispel any reason to have faith in Man and put us in a depressing state of how can I trust anyone? Not really. It is true. Man and Man alone cannot be trusted. You cannot have faith in Man because Man is flawed and Man at his own devices will fail you every time. So, yes, one cannot trust Man. But one can trust God. One can definitely have Faith in God. So when we question ourselves or others in our lives, we do not need to ask ourselves, “Can I trust him to do right?” or “Can I have faith in her to be true?” but ask, “Is God in his life” and, “Is she listening to God?” because although we cannot have faith in Man alone, we can have Faith in Man with God.

My wife recently told me about how her science professor made it quite clear in class that God had no place in science. I respect that. I recently heard the phrase, “Where science ends, God begins.” This makes sense. Science has never been (shall I go as far as to say) an exact science. But God has always been an exact God. You cannot switch the phrases around: Where God ends, science begins. This cannot be true because God does not end but science does. Where would we be today if we merely accepted the “science” that the earth was flat? Or if we accepted the “science” that removing “bad blood” from the sick can heal them? Yes, compared to today’s standards, those claims seem ridiculous but isn’t just as likely that the “science” that we believe in today can be just as ridiculous 100 years from now? Heck, it is most likely some of the reports we read in highly recognized science journals today will be completely ludicrous a week from now. Science is also a creation of Man and because Man is flawed, so is science. Having said that, how can I have faith in science? I cannot. But I can have Faith in God because you cannot disprove God.

These days I have been more at peace with myself. More than I have been in a long time. And I understand why. For years I have been trying to be in complete control of my life and in complete control of the world around me but I realize now that I am Man and Man is not perfect. It takes a perfect person to be able to control this world and the only one that fits that bill is God. I am not God. I am no where near being God. And because of that, I cannot, at my own devices, make myself right. I cannot, in my own control, help make others right. I am in no place, on my own, to justify my actions or judge others’. But I can, with the help of God – a lot of help, desire to be perfect. And because I know that I am Man and that Man cannot be perfect, the only way I can get as close as I possibly can be to being what cannot be physically accomplished on this earth is to have Faith.

How I Didn't Get Into West Side Story

When I first auditioned for the University of Arkansas production of West Side Story, I wasn’t quite sure I would even get into the production, let alone score a part that would offer me the opportunity to stand out as a key player in the show. For all I knew, if I were to even get cast at all, through some miraculous act of God, it would be something in the vein of “gang member #4” and that’s about it. And even more precisely, “Shark gang member #4” -- because of my Vietnamese/Korean ethnic background, I assumed that it was only logical that I was more likely to be cast as a Puerto Rican Shark member over that of a Caucasian Jet member. It wasn’t until later that I found out that the vision for the play was to be set in modern times with no focus on race, gender, or sexual preference (which meant that not only could I, a Vietnamese/Korean guy, possibly get the part of a Caucasian gang member, I could even be an Indian female homosexual and still get the same part). Yay for modern tolerance to all things politically correct.

The audition was a nerve wrecking one, primarily because I had never auditioned for a part in a play before, let alone one of this caliber. My wife, Amy, and I had talked about auditioning for the first time that year but I never really fully committed to the idea until about a few weeks prior to the audition date. Amy had been rehearsing all summer, memorizing Helena’s monologue for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which the University was also putting on for the 2006/2007 production year. She was more nervous than I was, not having as much experience onstage as I have had (being in drama classes in high school and about five plus years fronting two different punk/ska bands in the late 90’s) but for some reason she was more sure that she was going to audition than I was. I guess my thinking was, “Where the hell am I going to find the time to devote to being in a play like West Side?” But something happened that last month of the audition dates that I don’t entirely recall. I just vaguely remember working with Amy on her monologue (which she had memorized perfectly and had worked up a genuinely sincere rendition of the character, which I adored and was very supportive of) and then something she said, or something we spoke about made me decide that I needed to get my ass in gear and begin memorizing a monologue of my own.

In the mid-90’s, I had pursued my interest in acting by signing up with a local modeling/acting agency. During that four or five month stint, I had the opportunity to learn to walk and talk like a model (which was the main focus of the agency. I think the “acting” part was to draw in butt-ugly morons like me who had no interest in modeling but would be willing to shell out the clams for the acting side of the program) and even “acted” in a fund-raiser fashion show (which was presented at the Walton Art Center, on the very same stage I would later get to reunite with for West Side, nearly a decade later) and later competed in Los Angeles in the IMTA modeling/acting competition, where I scored the attention of a few acting agencies (primarily for my comedic monologues. No one really seemed interested in my dramatic acting or my faux singing talent) but in the end had to decline due to how much it would cost me to move to L.A.

After the competition was over, I realized what I had picked out for my dramatic monologue was pretty stupid (a little piece I had written myself at the last minute because my instructor did not care for my attempt at using an excerpt from “Green Eggs and Ham” for my dramatic monologue. Seriously) and wish I had chosen something else. While watching Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead I got really attached to a scene where Gene Hackman’s bad-guy mayor is scolding the town folk for trying to hire a gunmen to kill him during a shootist’s competition. After hearing his speech on how he was the local badass there and how whether anyone in that town would live to see another day was entirely up to him, I told myself how much I wish I had used that for my dramatic monologue instead of my cheap attempt at soap opera style yapping about a gay son trying to get his parents’ acceptance through crying and singing a song that they had sung together when he was young (like I said, stupid). It was that year when Amy and I took the leap of faith into the lion’s den of University drama productions that I had the chance to revisit the dramatic monologue and this time I wasn’t going to miss out on channeling Gene Hackman’s fury into my performance.

When we arrived at the audition, we could hear just outside the doors someone belting out the high pitched chords of West Side’s “I Feel Pretty” -- which actually made us feel pretty nervous. We filled out our applications and then sat quietly outside the doors for our chances to make fools of ourselves.

A few minutes later, our names get called and fortunately, we are allowed to go in at the same time, which helped because Amy and I were so scared to have to go in by ourselves. This way, we could at least be in the room together to watch each other succeed or more precisely, Amy could watch me look stupid on stage.

The audition took place in the University Theater. As we entered, we saw the brightly lit stage where a girl was just completing her monologue and was about to go into her short musical snippet. Did I mention that anyone interested in trying out for West Side not only had to do a short monologue but also sing a few bars of a song? Amy didn’t have to worry about this since she was only interested in scoring a role in a non-musical, while I was only interested in getting into West Side. Which reminds me of why I was so obsessed with being a part of this production.

Back in 1991, I saw West Side Story for the first time in Repertory Theater class. I was in the twelfth grade and had been asked to join this high level drama class on the basic merit of having been seen doing ridiculously bold performances in front of the school year after year for either Springfest or the Student Council elections (always a campaign manager, never a candidate) or just in the senior commons outside the lunch room. The drama teacher said that she saw a “ham at heart” and believed I would be perfect for theater and overrode the prerequisites normally required to be in Repertory. Anywho, as part of the learning, we sat through versions of Sweeny Todd (with a devilishly evil Angela Landsbury playing the butcher that hacked up Sweeny Todd’s poor victims) to The Importance of Being Ernest and to West Side, West Side being my favorite because I just couldn’t get over how cool it was to see these serious gang members dancing and singing between street arguments and rumbles. It later became the inspiration for a stupid little home video I made with my friends called “Gayz in the Hood” which was a cross between Boyz in the Hood and West Side Story (you can imagine how bad that little short film was). Later, when I ran across a WSS cover album by a punk band called “Schlong” I was determined to make a punk rock version of the movie with a bunch of traditional Skinheads (the non-racist kind) and Nazi Skinheads in place of the Jets and Sharks but in the end, my vision was too ambitious for my group of friends and our budget. And no one really wanted to keep their head shaved for that long since I was expecting the movie to take about 6 months to film. That was the last time I considered being involved in a production of WSS because what were the chances of me ever going to Broadway and getting involved or West Side coming to Northwest Arkansas and actually needing local people to audition for the part?

Back to present day, 2007. The audition coordinator at the door asked Amy and me who wanted to volunteer to go first. Amy, being a bit more nervous than I was, opted to go second, which I was cool with. I walked to the front of the room (Amy waited “on deck” in the back row) and handed my music snippet to the young lady upfront. Once the stage was clear, she got onstage and announced me and what I would be doing (a dramatic monologue followed by a musical segment) and then I was on. My heart was beating pretty quickly (even after all of my years of hamming it up on stage, I still get those initial butterflies in my stomach just before performing). The lights shining onto the stage were so bright I couldn’t make out anyone in the seats but I knew that somewhere about thirty feet in front of me were the three “judges” who I had only seen the backs of their heads prior to getting on stage. I took a deep breath and let it all out.

After I completed the second half of my audition (the song segment) I thanked the judges and left stage left (or right. I still forget which is which) and immediately left the room, assuming that I was supposed to do that. I had wanted to stay to watch Amy but I got this feeling that the audition group didn’t want people hanging about in the theater if they were not waiting in line to audition themselves.

Back out in the lobby, after a long moment of silence, I could begin to make out Amy’s voice. Her delivery was soft and sweet, just as she had always done it at home, and I was proud to know that at that moment, she was finally onstage and was going through a real audition for the first time. We both agreed that regardless if either of us got a part, we would celebrate the fact that we were brave enough to even audition. A few minutes more, Amy was done and I saw her exiting through the same doors that I had just rushed through a few moments prior,

We both felt pretty good about the fact that we had gone through the audition and agreed that we would both just pray for each other and would continue auditioning in the future now that we have gotten the first scary audition out of the way.

Outside, Amy explained to me the events of what happened while I was onstage, all of the reactions that I missed due to the bright lights and my rushing out of the room so quickly. She said that my dramatic monologue was very strong and intimidating, just like I always am. I apparently do mean and intimidating really well (hence why when I am paying for something at a clothing store, the girls behind the checkout counter always look like they are about to cry when asking me for my debit card. I am trying not to be so scary now and am getting better at it). But the part that was amazing for her was when I went from angry, mean mayor of the old west into a manic rendition of ALL of the characters of the last few bars of “Gee, Officer Krupke” from West Side. She said that when it got to the part when different characters would sing individual lines, my mimicking of different voices to portray the different characters made the judges laugh and left my audition on such a high note that one of the judges actually had to stop Amy from going on stage in order to get up and compose himself. A part of me still wonders if that judge simply had to go to the bathroom or something but regardless, I always felt bad because if I were the reason why they had to make Amy wait before going on, I feel like my doing so was a distraction for her and may have made her more nervous than she would have been if she didn’t have to sit back down and wait for a few moments to go on. But it’s okay because she was proud to see that I could still get that kind of reaction from people.

The next few days were an interesting few days. Amy and I continued living our lives as we always did but now we would stop on occasion to discuss the auditioning experience and query whether or not we would get a callback. It was easier for me to check because I could log on to the University site to check if a posting had been done. As for Amy, she could only check when she was up on campus but since we lived about 40 minutes away, it wasn’t as easy. Eventually the day came and our nervous waiting had ended.

According the online roster, it appeared that I did not in fact get chosen for any of the bigger roles (I was interested in either being Riff or Bernardo) but I did get on the list for potential smaller roles (Gladhand, Schrank, Krupke, or one of many gang members) and, thus, my first callback. Unfortunately, I also found the callbacks for Midsummer up at the University and I did not see Amy’s name on the list. She was so sad when I told her but even through her tears, she was able to express excitement in my getting a callback, um, call. Of course, looking back, a part of me still wonders if pretty much everyone who did not get chosen for a major role but showed interest in West Side (which Amy did not select on her application) got on the first callback list. I hate to be cynical about this part but seeing how many people were on that list, I still can’t help but wonder if my hunch was correct.

The first callback was worse for me than the initial audition. When I learned that it would be a movement audition, I began having second thoughts. Of course I knew that if I was going to be in West Side, I would most likely have to dance. But for some reason, my mind blocked that out until I saw my name on that list. I wondered if there had been some kind of mistake because on my application, when asked if I danced, I distinctly recall filling out, “About as good as a bad dancing Asian guy can dance.” Having assumed the casting director saw this, I wondered if maybe the dancing isn’t that important in this version since I still made the list. On the day of the callback, seeing the other potential gang members, I knew immediately I was wrong.

I drove straight from work to the University Theater for the movement audition. As soon as I entered the building, I saw a small horde of guys and gals stretching on the lobby floor, in either dancing attire or workout clothes, me standing there in my work slacks and short-sleeved work polo. One girl (who later got the part of Maria in the play) was doing all sorts of balletic jumps and bounds and spins down the hallway and the only part of me that was jumping at that point were my balls shooting back up inside me as I realized that I had gotten myself into something I probably shouldn’t have gotten myself into. Fortunately, one of Amy’s friends was also in on the callbacks and when she showed up, I was a little bit relaxed but not much because she too saw the other dancers and began to start worrying.

The first part of the callback was for each auditioner to go on stage and do a 30 second dance segment, entirely choreographed by the performer. I had tried a few nights before to come up with something but realized that my years of spazzing out onstage as a punk rocker did not translate as well into the more graceful dancing of a big Broadway-style musical, so I decided I would just make it up when I got on stage.

The order was on a completely voluntary basis, the more bold performers jumping up first and dancing their ways through some very outstanding and often time hilarious routines, each one making me feel more and more unprepared and less and less enthusiastic about going on stage. After about seven or eight very talented young performers completed their impressive dance/fight/whatever-the-hell-they-wanted-to-do routines, I decided that it was now or never, so as soon as there was an opening I jumped up and made my way to the stage, nervous as hell and wondering how visible it would be to the audience if I had pissed myself.

As soon as the music started I jumped right into it. At first, I simply flew around, spinning, skipping, rolling about, feeling pretty good about what I was doing, feeling the music in me and just feeling pretty darn good about it. Alas, jumping in head first also took a lot out of me and after about 15 seconds, I found that I was completely out of breath and the last 15 seconds felt like hours and I remember as my body sluggishly tried to keep moving for the remainder of my time, the only thing on my mind was, “When the hell will that damned music stop?!”

The one thing I saw predominantly within this crowd of would-be West Siders was that apparently, clicks had already been established and it was almost like a club, one that if you weren’t already “in” you felt pretty alone on the outside. Fortunately, having Anna there (Amy’s friend) made me not feel so alone but there were times where I wondered how long it would take and how naturally would it happen for me to one day be on the other side – one of the veterans who already built a bond with those laughing, happy drama people and be able to walk into one of these things, already knowing that no matter what happened, you always had someone there who is glad to see you there. Don’t get me wrong. To an outsider, this would look like snobbery, but in all truthfulness, it is more like a family. These were people who had gone through a few productions together and doing so brought something special into their lives which they all could relate to and the only reason they did not interact with the “outsiders” was because they were just as uncomfortable with the outsider as the outsider was uncomfortable with them. I learned this fairly quickly as the callbacks moved on.

The next task was for us to be grouped into, um, groups and each group had a series of tasks they had to complete, as a “gang” via a choreographed routine that the pre-designated groups had to come up with in a specified amount of time. I ended up being in the group led by MFA student, Jason Engstrom, who was very warm and welcoming to me, which I always appreciated and actually played an important role in what would come later in my tour d’westside. Anna also, fortunately, got placed in Jason’s group so we were able to support each other.

One of the tasks was, through movement, to demonstrate a hierarchy of rank where one person was obviously the leader and one was obviously the weakest one of the group. Although I had always been pretty good at playing mean and tough, I have also found that I tended to lean towards weak and subservient, too, when someone else would take the leader role (in this case, Jason). In the end, a good choice for me because when it came time to perform our group choreography -- which each group did onstage in front of the other groups -- although we were able to perform well as a group, I found being the lackey gave me a few opportunities to behave in way that made me stand out and get some individual focus, which, even in a team, when you are vying for a role or a position, you want to be noticed. Thank you everyone else for being stronger than I was.

The final task of the movement callback was the worst of the three. The one I hated the most and the one that would continue to haunt all the way through the full production of West Side: the Mambo. One of the things about the mambo is that in order to do it in a way that truly, genuinely looks good, you have to either have a butt or nice full hips. I had neither and trying to move my stick thin framed in the same way the curvaceous girls and the more “sexy” guys did proved to be next to impossible for me and kept me from being able to ever fully feel confident about my ability to ever learn this dance.

At first, we did it as a whole group, later we were broken down into groups of four, where we did the moves on the stage. With fewer people on the stage, it made me feel even more self conscious and when it was my turn to be out there in front of everyone, I threw caution (and any and all dancing ability) into the wind and just moved around like an epileptic scarecrow trying to tie my shoes with my pinky toes. I remember feeling like the choreographer burning her glare into me as I butchered what was supposed to be a sensual, exotic dance, and turning it into a nervous fit only useful if one was trying to shoo off killer bees. But then, it was over.

As I wished Anna good luck (I kept telling her how I was so sure I would be voted off and that she would definitely get a call back for the next round) I sulked back to my car and called Amy to report on what happened. Of course, after speaking to her, I felt a lot better. She reminded me how important it was to remember that I should take pride in getting into the first callback and that even if I didn’t get called back again, I did more than I would have ever expected. I found that throughout this whole experience, it was having Amy in my life that kept me going.

When the next callback listing was posted, I was taken aback. Firstly, because Anna did not make the list (I felt so bad about having to call her and tell her because she did not have internet access at her apartment so I promised I would call her as soon as the list was posted) but secondly, because I did. I had to look it over a couple of times and when it finally sank in, I sat back and took a breath. Of course, this wasn’t entirely a good thing because as much joy as I was feeling about getting one step closer to being in the play, I was feeling just as much dread over the idea of what kind of tortures will I have to go through for the next set of stupid human tricks. If I had to do the mambo one more time, I think I would have called in sick.

Fortunately, I was able to pull myself together and when I learned that the next level was for voice, I was not as nervous but still not entirely sure about myself because my only real singing experience prior to this was what some could probably disqualify as real singing: being in a punk band. Yes, I was the lead singer for two different bands but singing in a punk bad was not much unlike imitating the sounds cats make when they’re having sex. I had never had any professional singing training and did not have an ear for music. I have been told that I was prone for being off key but it worked for the kind of music the bands I was involved in were playing. Fine and dandy, but worst off was that when I am off key, I usually did not know I was off key. Gulp. Here we go again.

The next round of auditions was less crowded. Over half of the people from the movement callback did not get on the list for the vocal callback. This time, the handful of hopefuls were closer together and without Anna there, I felt even more out of place. Fortunately, there were a few people who stood out of the “already connected” crowd and were very friendly to me, and in doing so, scored permanent places in my memory so when I got a chance to work with them again, I felt an extra amount of warmth for seeing their smiling faces again.

Fortunately, the vocal callback was a lot easier than I had thought it would be. Most of the singing that we did was in groups and this made me feel more comfortable. The only times we had to sing individually was when we did the rounds of “Gee Officer Krupke” which ironically I flubbed up on. Where during my initial audition I was able to conjure up a few different vocals for the different characters, one right after the other, being given only one character to portray, I found having to wait for my cue caused my voice to get dry and I squeaked in the beginning of a couple of the run-throughs, trying to sing with a nervous tongue. But the good thing was when I walked out this round, I didn’t feel entirely stupid -- just less stupid. I wasn’t any more sure of myself this second round than I was the first but this time the change was that I no longer cared whether or not I made the next cut. I was simply proud for making it as far as I did.

Of course, this new attitude didn’t change the fact that when I checked the roster the next posting and saw my name on the list again, I was shocked. Amy squealed in delight to see that I made another round and I hugged her tightly in thankfulness for her support. This was it. The last round. Amy and I had booked a trip to California for vacation the following week so we decided that I would go in and do my very best this last round and then let it go and not think about it again until we got back. Of course, seeing how the results of this last round would be announced while we were in San Francisco, that meant that I would have my laptop with me and would be checking the roster every day until I knew for sure whether or not I would be in West Side Story.

The final callback was the easiest for me. It was the one I was most comfortable with because it was the one I was most ready for: character reading. I had made the list of potential supporting characters: Schrank, Krupke, and Gladhand. Not necessarily roles I had ever considered but was not above playing if I got one of them, Schrank being the most promising and the one I felt strongest about because I had pushed my angry, mean self in the initial audition and was hoping to be able to use that energy in the bigot police lieutenant.

When the day came, I rehearsed and rehearsed Schrank’s big scene where he cuts down the Sharks and the Jets in Doc’s drugstore. I wanted to be the most intimidating, most hated lieutenant in West Side history so I memorized the monologue to a tee and had my voice cues set (loud angry here. Softer, more facetious/sarcastic there) but, alas, when the time came, I realized that the scene that we would be reading for was the first scene where Schrank breaks up the courtyard brawl, which didn’t have as many opportunities for me show range in my voice as I would have hoped. Yes, there was good stuff there, but I had to get familiar with it on the fly and didn’t know it as well as the other scene. In the end, I feel like this costed me the role and I wasn’t so sure of myself after doing my reading.

The saving grace, though, was that I was prepared for the Gladhand role. I read that there would be two readings: one straight off the script and more straight forward; a second with Gladhand being more hip and ending it with some rapping. Since I really couldn’t come up with much to make Krupke more alive (outside of pushing out my pot belly for comic effect) so I put insurance in Gladhand as a backup so that I would at least be in the play. Having had the experience of songwriting from my years in the band, I wrote a really quick rap that paid homage to not only West Side but also films like The Outsiders and Romper Stomper.

My Gladhand reading went over pretty well. At least it felt good to me. I channeled the spirit of Don Knotts and turned him into what he would be like if he were a neurotic, slightly homicidal social worker. Maybe not the ideal Gladhand but I had fun pulling it off. And when it came time for me to rap, I felt like most everyone was surprised when I pulled out my rhymes and represented like no other geeky social worker has ever represented. Word.

And that was that. There would be no more callbacks and no more opportunities to try and weasel my way into this production. Amy and I packed our bags and headed out to San Fran for a few days of sun and beautiful California sky. While we were out there, we got to attend an old friend’s wedding reception in a beautiful penthouse on top of this really fancy hotel. Egads! That thing must’ve cost a fortune. We also got to visit Pacific Grove, Monteray Bay, and Carmel, all of which I would be more than ecstatic to move out to (I have always been a west coast kind of guy). It was a wonderful weekend and there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t wish I was still there. Oh, and midway through the trip, I logged into the University site and saw that I did not make the final cut and my hopes for being in West Side had just left the building. I admit it was a bit disappointing but being in California when I found out made it easier to swallow and in the end, as I sat on side of the rocks of Monteray and stared out into the beautiful blue water with Amy, I realized that maybe this just wasn’t my time and regardless, we both learned a lot from the experience and this wasn’t going to be the last that the world of drama would see of Vu and Amy Ha. For the moment, though, I closed the book on West Side Story (as Amy closed the book to this run of Midsummer) and talked about our plans to one day move out to the West coast.