Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some will die poor and alone. -- Shakespeare

This is an email I just got from my mom:

Hey Girl...Please fax a copy of your Allstate Dec page (front page showing car, eff date, name, coverages) to Bonnie at State Farm so they can cancel the State Farm policy. Love you!

Hmmmmmmm....

Based on my current status as an D+ Adult, this email freaks me out. BIG thanks to mom for giving me a brief explanation of what a dec page is. She knows me so well.

I've been trying to think of the necessary steps I would have to go through to accomplish this task and impress my mother. They are as follows:

1. Dig through a stack of papers in my room deemed "scary papers"
2. Cry when I can't find the requisite "dec page"
3. Call my State Farm agent and ask him to email it to me.
4. Receive reprimand from State Farm agent for not being able to keep track of things like dec pages
5. Cry in the corner for not being able to be an A+ Adult
6. Treat my sorrow by going to the kitchen for a treat
7. Find my dec page in my kitchen cupboard behind my shark-shaped fruit snacks
8. Get in a time machine and go back to 1994, when people used fax machines
9. Go somewhere on campus and look really frowny until someone tells me where I can fax my dec page
10. Find a fax machine
11. Try 843 times to fax the dec page
12. Receive a phone call from State Farm asking me why I sent the wrong page 842 times
13. Cry in the corner
14. Move back in with mom

From independent young woman to emotional heap of incompetence in 14 easy steps. I swear, sometimes I want to get married just so I don't have to worry about doing taxes.

One day. One day I'll be an A+ adult. It just may be when I'm 75.

Shh! Here's all my secrets.

Secrets.

I don't have any.

I'm an open book. A really really open book. Sometimes a bit too open.

Asia: Blah blah! All my thoughts!
Other people: Ummm.... thanks for that.

I've tried to have secrets because sometimes I want to seem mysterious and sexy. Like how Jessica Rabbit hides one eye behind her hair because her life is so mysterious.

Close, eh?


Eh??


Well I'm just not mysterious and I'll have to come to grips with that. I used to have secrets. I used to be embarrassed about stuff. What happened? I just stopped caring.

So I'm coming clean. The following is a list of things that I used to keep secret from others.


1. Sleeping in my mom's bed.

 When my dad died, I started sleeping in my mom's bed. I don't really know why it started. That was in 1996. This continued for the rest of, well, forever. I never went back to sleeping in my own bed. When we would have family come stay at our house, we would put them in my room. They would apologize for putting me out and I would just say something like, "Oh its no problem!" Little did they know that my bed was completely unoccupied except when company was staying over.

I would still use my room for other things -- playing with Barbies, reading, homework. I still got dressed and ready for the day in my own room. But when it came to sleeping, I was in with mom. For a little while, I tried to be a grown up and sleep in my own bed, but I just didn't like it. Mom was worried this would make it hard for me to sleep once I went to college. It didn't. I was fine.

When my brother's friends would come over and stay late -- like time-to-go-to-bed late -- I would go into my room, put on my jammies, wash my face, then sneak like I was doing reconnaissance work for the CIA over to my mom's room. Or I would make some weird excuse about why I'd be going into my mom's room when I was completely ready for bed.

ASIA: Oh! Well... I'm just headed to ask my mom a pressing question! Yes, despite the late hour, my question is quite pressing. So pressing, in fact, that I may be in there until you leave to go home. At that point, I will proceed to my own bed like a normal child.
Other people: [confused...]


2. Indiana Jones and Back to the Future

I have not seen any of the movies from either of these series. I used to lie about this all the time. Kinda like how I used to lie about having read The Giver, but I eventually just broke down and read it when I was like 18.

Well-read friend: OMG It's like that part in The Giver with the memories and the birthing mothers!!
ASIA: [What the crap? Birthing mothers?? That sounds disturbing.] Totally, friend! Loooove it!

I feel like Indiana Jones and Back to the Future are movies you're supposed to grow up with. If you grew up with them, dandy for you! I did not grow up watching them and putting them on as an adult just doesn't seem appealing to me. I know (more or less) what they are about and I've seen the iconic scenes on TV or Youtube or film classes, but I haven't seen any of them all the way through.


3. Play-Doh

I used to eat Play-Doh. I might still if I got the chance. I didn't eat it like ice cream or anything. It was only tasty in very small quantities. This will explain why the Play-Doh resources of my third grade class depleted so slowly.


4. Hot Dog buns


When I eat a hot dog, not only do I not put anything on it (no ketchup, no relish, no whatever else), I also don't eat the bun. Here's how I see it, the "hot dog" part of a hot dog is delicious enough. I don't want to add any additional flavoring to it and I don't want to dilute the taste by eating a huge piece of bread at the same time. I really like hot dogs. What can I say? I'm a fundamentalist.

This hasn't kept me from getting a bun, though. At most cook-outs I still put a bun on my plate and put the hot dog in it so as to avoid scornful glances from pro-bun people. But then I sit down, eat the hot dog and give the bun to a duck. Or the trash. Or just use it to get another hot dog.


There you have it, world! My dirty laundry out in the air! HAHA!

I've just realized... It may be that I don't have secrets because my life hasn't really taken any super dramatic turns. I've never kissed a boy that was dating another girl. I've never stolen anything or moonlighted as a can-can dancer.

I need to work on that. I'll try to make my life a bit more dramatic and mysterious. Until then... feel free to ask me whatever.

I have no shame.

How to NOT look like an idiot

So Christmas is on its way. Hooray!!

Now all of the people that cry innocent baby tears when someone plays Christmas music before Thanksgiving can rest assured that their special feelings will be intact until next November when those pre-Thanksgiving-Christmas-music-playing rascals come out from their caves to annually ruin lives. I salute you, Oppressive Thanksgiving Activists. Someone's gotta keep those Chestnuts from Roasting until it is appropriate to do so.

[Side note: My mother's dislike of "Chestnuts Roasting" has been conditioned into all of her children. None of us like The Christmas Song. Why? I don't actually know. I haven't asked in a while. It's just something Pavlovian in me that causes my gag reflex to activate when I hear about those wily Chestnuts.]

Unfortunately, this time of year is when I'm faced with two of my biggest word pronunciation fears.

Pecan and Caramel.

For some reason, these two delights come up in conversation a lot more at Christmastime than at any other time of year.

You've got 2 camps, essentially.

There's the PEE-can and CAR-mull group. And there's the pe-CAHN and KARA-mell group. I have not chosen a team. The PEE-can team seems like they were all raised in trailers and wear NASCAR t-shirts that are cut-off at the midriff. The pe-CAHN people seem like they are all named Pascal and wear blazers 24/7. I have not yet found my place.

For a while, I wasn't sure how to handle myself in situations where pronouncing these words was called for. I would just switch teams/pronunciations every other time I would say the word. This felt wrong and non-committal. People feel strongly about their pronunciations.

ASIA: The CAR-mull on this KARA-mell apple is delish!
The "I have picked a camp." guy: You are shameful.

Then they'd probably either say or think a cuss word at me. BUT! Now I have figured out how to cope with my inability to commit. Firstly, I try to avoid these words all together.

ASIA: Oooh! The gooey inside of this candy bar is delish!
Other person: [confused...]

It mostly works as long as you say it with you head held high, as if you are too important to remember the official names of candy bar ingredients. You are simply too busy hanging out with Coldplay and Vera Wang to bother with such things. The other coping mechanism is to pronounce it totally wrong -- but, here's the catch -- say it with an unidentifiable accent. Then it looks like you are funny and you don't have to explain why your funny-ness manifests itself with the British/Indian mispronunciation of Christmastime treats. You're just that cool.

ASIA: Oh, how I love a delish PEE-CAHN. Hmufmufmuf! [ <---- this is how you laugh with an unidentifiable accent]
Other person: Oh what a splash you are!

Hopefully you have good enough friends/associates that they would call you a splash when you're being one. Those people are hard to find. Cherish them. Cherish them this holiday season.

Life: Planned!

When I was little, Mom and Dad were like, "You can be anything you want when you grow up!"

I was like, "Sweet. I wanna be a bird."

They were like, "Umm... crap. We totally lied."

They then had to qualify their statement. Since then, I've been trying to find a non-bird aspiration that is as cool as the bird option. Mission: difficult.

Once I was 98% sure I couldn't be a bird, I decided I just wanted to be famous. However, I couldn't decide if I wanted to be a famous singer or a famous actress. Such decisions! I was clearly cut out for both paths. I merely had to choose which glamorous life better suited me. Sigh, the life of a superstar. Then, one shiny day, the clouds parted. I saw a J-Lo movie. I realized I no longer had to choose. If J-Lo could be both, then freakin' so could I.

This is me dancing at my brother's wedding. TOTAL same.

This was my aspiration for a long time. Super-singing-acting-double-threat-diva-stardom was my only goal in life until high school. In the 11th grade, I entered the Miss Mandarin pageant. I don't tell a lot of people about the Miss Mandarin pageant, but it was crazy times. Maybe it'll get its own post one day soon.

[I just realized that maybe some of you have no idea what "Miss Mandarin" is. I'm not Asian... despite the confusion you may get from my name and the name of my high school. In Florida, we name things after oranges. I went to Mandarin High School. Miss Mandarin was the high school beauty pageant.]

In the Miss Mandarin pageant, I had to talk about how much I loved volunteering and how I wanted to grow up to be a useful member of society. My dreams of being a super-singing-acting-double-threat-diva-star didn't really fit this mold. Especially since the other girls wanted to be doctors and news anchors and baby-savers.

I thought about it for 20 seconds and remembered that my oldest brother was having a blast studying journalism. That sounded fun.

Judge: What do you want to be when you grow up? How do you intend to rescue all the babies?
Asia: Journalism?

Needless to say, I didn't win nothin'. But it was a good experience.

Journalism continued to sound appropriately grown-up and sophisticated for the rest of high school. During the summer after graduation though, things changed again.

One day my brother was headed to auditions for a local movie so he could cover it for his college newspaper. I decided to come along. It was a movie about high schoolers being emotional. We both ended up auditioning. A few days later, I got a call. I had landed a lead role.

On set!

For a couple of weeks that summer, I was a movie star. I got to smack some dude in the face and pretend to be drunk and wear a pretty dress. The best part of that experience, though, wasn't feeling like a superdiva. It was being on set. I fell in love with the processes that happened behind the camera.

They never finished the movie, so (perhaps luckily...) no one will ever see my foray into acting. But this got the wheels turning in my head. I was going to BYU and I was going to study film. What was I going to do with film? No idea.

I started college and found a path. My life-long curse of being a super duper bossy pants finally came in handy. I was to be a UPM. So life provided a path for me. All was well with the universe.

So now I'm graduated and I need to figure out what to do from here.

[crickets chirping]

Two days ago I discovered Talent Quest, the national karaoke competition. I seem to remember a Gwyneth Paltrow movie where she made a living by travelling around singing karaoke. Sounds perfect. I don't need no record deal, American Idol. I just need the road, a MIDI version of "My Heart Will Go On", and a dream.

Life: pwned.

Random Asia Fact #1

Wanna know random things about me? You're probably sitting at home/work/library just itching to know the random minutiae of my psyche.

...No?

Too bad, I will tell you anyway.



RANDOM ASIA FACT #1:

I don't like cookies.

That's not true. I feel totally neutral about them.

I have no emotion on the subject of cookies.

I have eaten many cookies and I have enjoyed a few of them. I have also disliked some cookies. But the majority of them have no effect on me.


If someone makes me cookies because of my birthday/sadness/they forgot to visit teach me, I always appreciate the thought. I know that it's a really nice thing to make someone cookies. Having said that... I almost always give them away. Usually to my roommates.

Same thing goes with cakes and brownies.

For my birthday this year, one of my friends asked one of my other friends what my favorite kind of cake was. Friend 2 told friend 1 that my favorite kind of cake was pepperoni pizza. There was never a truer statement uttered.

Mama says I can't substitute wedding pizza for wedding cake but I say it's my wedding.

FIGHTS

Now that my first kiss story is done, I'm terrified that I will lose my readership. I don't have anymore exciting cliff hangers to keep you coming back. PLUS, it's probably now firmly solidified in your mind that I am mentally unsound, so you probably don't want to encourage my crazy by feeding my perception that you think I'm funny. Did that sentence make any sense?
Anyway.

So you've just exited Happy Romantic Blog mode and you're entering Dark Past Vigilante Blog mode. Welcome, suckers.

I'm keeping your interest by telling you about my fights. This is basically the opposite of my first kiss story.

Picture me as an 11-year-old. I was blond and skinny and had to wear plaid dresses with white knee-socks and saddle shoes.

Inwardly, though, I was a warrior. The was a storm a'brewing.



FIGHT #1: (ding! ding!)

I was a total punk in middle school. This was like 4 years after my dad died and I was medicated for a mental illness I didn't have. I was all kinds of messed up, perfectly prone to engage in some excellent hand combat.

I didn't have very many friends and I thought the world was full of people that hated me. One of these people was Murphy.

Murphy was the boy that everyone loved. He was really nice to all the girls, which was strange for 6th grader. He loved all of them but me. I probably deserved his hatred, though I can't think of any specific reasons at the moment.

One night we were in a Shakespeare play the school put on. Julius Caesar I think. After the play, a bunch of us went out onto the soccer field for no reason. Probably the reason was "It's like 10pm and the soccer field is dark and if we go out there we will feel like Batman or some other intense adult."

So we were out on the soccer field being all edgy and suddenly Murphy attacked me. Ok, I probably said something really mean or retarded and he was just acting out because we were on the soccer field at 10pm and anything is possible. I should get Murphy's side of the story because in his version, I'm probably the villain. But I'm a little scared to ask him about this because it was like 12 years ago and our limited interaction involved a fight...

So anyway, he just kind of came at me. I don't remember much except just trying to push him away. Midst all the flying limbs, I must have hit his nose because he was suddenly still and ran off into the darkness. The next day a few people came up to me in the lunch room and asked me about why I gave Murphy a bloody nose.

I don't even know if he actually had a bloody nose, but we didn't really talk about it again.

A couple of years ago, Murphy contacted me on facebook. He told me that he was really sorry about everything that had happened in middle school. It was really really sweet.

Relationship: mended.



FIGHT #2: (ding! ding!)

Fight number 2 was totally my fault. I started it. I finished it. It was all me.

I think this was the following year. One morning, my family woke up to discover that we had been robbed. It was super traumatizing. It still makes my stomach hurt to think about this. They had come up our driveway, entered our open garage, and taken basically everything out of my mom's minivan. Her purse, wallet and phone were included in the deal, along with like 300 CDs. The only thing left was the Santana CD that was actually in the CD player at the time. Anytime, I hear "Smooth" by Rob Thomas and Santana, I remember this stupid day.

At school the following Monday, I was still a bit moody about it. Someone asked what was wrong. I whispered to them what had happened. Some dork kid name Amir heard what I had whispered and shouted to our class, "Hey everyone! Asia was robbed!"

Then I decided that I needed to kill him. I got out of my desk, marched over to him, grabbed the back of his shirt and slammed him into a nearby desk. Once he was bent over the desk, trying to get his balance to stand up, I didn't really know what to do with him so I just went back to my desk and sat down.

The craziest part about all of this is... I don't remember where our teacher was. I didn't get into any trouble for it. This may have been right before class was supposed to start so people were just getting settled in the class room. I don't know.

A few months later, a boy named Jeremy told me he loved me. I didn't really know what to do with this information. He also said that he waited to tell me about his love because he was afraid that I was going to do to him what I'd done to Amir. I'd become a monster! But he was in love with me anyway.

Oh, middle school. Sigh.


SIDE NOTE: I don't remember if I've ever told my mom about these fights. Don't be disappointed, Mom! I grew up to be a dainty flower of a lady.

First Kiss Part VI: My First Kiss

If this is the first time you're reading my blog... this is a bad place to start. For the rest of you, here it is. The final chapter.


My First Kiss:
My oldest brother and I got in my little 2-wheel-drive jeep (I'm from Florida) and headed west.

We arrived in Utah 4 days later and I began my college experience. I lived in a tiny dorm room on the 3rd floor of a large dormitory tower. My bathroom was shared with about 20 other girls. It was a party.

I was meeting new boys and going on crazy adventures. I hiked the Y (worst. hike. ever.). I went to football, soccer and volleyball games. I ate Doritos for breakfast. I turned 18. Life was good. Strange, but good.

Thanksgiving approached. I couldn't afford to go home. To see how my Thanksgiving was, see my former post "Why I'm Scared of Mexican Food". It was bad.

Pretty soon it was time to go home for Christmas. I missed my Mama and was starting to wonder how people survived Utah winters. It was orange-picking season in Florida. I arrived on a beautiful sunny day before Christmas, hugged my Mama and began to tell my family of college life.

Christmas was wonderful, with a few tiny hiccups. I think this was the year our hot water heater decided to break and flood the whole house in a 2-inch-deep puddle. We opened the back door and began to sweep the water out with brooms. Mars and Zac sang pirate songs. Actually I just remembered that this was the year before the water heater incident. So there's a little freebie story for you.

Mars was on his mission in Argentina.

I reconnected with The Four (Ally, Caroline, Clare, Asia) at the Barnes and Noble Starbucks (that was/is the cool place to hang out) and we started talking about plans for New Years Eve. We were going to just have a chill little gathering at my friend Amy's house.

A few days before New Years Eve, I was hanging out with the girls and one of them let something slip. I don't remember the exact story and it was told second-hand anyway. So this is kinda like a game of "telephone" where the end message is nothing like the beginning one... but the essence of the story is this: While away at school, Alex was at a party or something. Someone made a comment to Alex about hooking up with some random girl. He responded with something like, "I haven't been waiting to see Asia for nothing." and abstained from interaction with Random Girl.

When I heard this, my stomach did a back flip. I was nervous and anxious and excited and omg he's been waiting to see me???

The day of New Years Eve, Alex came over. I mean, we were still friends and I hadn't seen him in a long time. This felt different, though. There was something there. A certain electricity. We went on a walk to the end of my street. At the end of the road, I tentatively set my hand in the crook of his elbow. He reached up and took my hand in his. I asked him if he was going to Amy's that evening. He responded that he would be there.

This is what my street looks like.


That night, me and the ladies rolled up to Amy's together. We took a bunch of pictures and lounged around for a little while. There was a good little group of us there including Alex and a few other random people from high school. I was just looking through photos on facebook to try to jog my memory of that night and it turns out there were more people there than I thought.

No matter.

Alex and I chatted like the friends we were and it seemed like a normal hang-out night. He was probably talking about Star Wars and I was probably laughing at him. Soon it was 11:00pm. Then 11:30pm. Then 11:45pm. It was beginning to feel less and less like a normal hang-out night. Something was going to happen. 4 years of pining and crying and pulling at leg hairs.

Something was finally going to happen.

[insert anticipatory music and maybe that clock-beeping noise from 24]


11:55

11:56

Alex went to the bathroom...

11:57

I started to get suuuuper nervous...

11:58

Alex came out of the bathroom...

11:59


..............10.............


..............9...............


..............8...............


..............7...............


..............6...............


Alex put his arm around me and held me close.


..............5..............


..............4..............


..............3..............


..............2..............


"New years kiss?"



And there it was. It was quick and small. Modest and shy. But it was a big deal. The previous 4 years of ups and downs were worth it. In that moment, he was mine.

When I got home that night, I crept silently into my mom's room. I nudged her gently to wake her. In the sleepy darkness of our home she whispered "Did you get it?" I smiled. "Yep."



That's the story. That was my first kiss.



I could go on to tell you about how we had a perfect 4-day romance before it was time to once again return to school. Those four days were like living in a dream. It was magic.

I could tell you about how Alex wanted to do a long-distance relationship and I thought that sounded too hard. I could tell you about how we called each other and sent each other CDs from across the country, but I started to become distant after a while. Alex could probably tell you a story about a cold and distant Asia that came to visit the following March. I still feel bad about that. She may have told him she just wanted to be friends.

But none of this matters now. What matters was that perfect moment in the middle of all the messy, complicated, badly-timed, poorly-executed, heart-broken frenzy. It was a moment of clarity. It was a moment of honesty. Love? I don't know. Maybe.

We've had our sporadic friendly contact over the years. Random visits and text messages. I started dating someone. It ended. He started dating someone. Lucky girl. No matter what, though, there will always be a special place in my heart for this boy. You've heard about my expert dating skills (or utter lack thereof) so you could see how something like this could leave a mark.

And indeed it has.

If you were to have Alex tell you about this, it would probably be completely different.

But that's my story.