3 posts tagged “childhood”
Show us your mother.
Happy Mom's Day to all the moms out there!
Honestly, they should have just combine the QoTD & The VoxHunt because they belong together!
Anyway, here is a picture of my mom on her wedding day in the Philippines. Cavite to be exact. My mom is one of the hardest working moms out there. I'm sure everyone says that about their mothers but she really did work hard. She had 4 kids and held down a full-time job plus multiple sales jobs in the evening. My dad was usually out to sea because he was in the Navy & worked on the carriers so she had 4 little kids running around while she tried to keep it all together.
She used to pick us up after school and take us with her on her sales jobs because she could not afford a babysitter. This was when we were in pre-school and up to 4th grade. I am sure people out there may be shocked but seriously, what the hell else was she supposed to do? She just immigrated her and none of her family lived here so she was pretty much alone with 4 kids.
My mom would pull a bit of a scared-straight line with us. It worked. We're all still here. Anyway, she would scare the crap out of us so that we would behave while she went to these houses to do her sales pitch. One of her stories was that if the police saw us, we were supposed to duck out of sight or else they would take us away. Hello, how freaky is that story to a couple of elementary school kids?!? We had a Red Ford Pinto Stationwagon that she added curtains to so that we were semi-concealed. Some one was always the lookout and the second that person spotted a "cop" we would scurry into hiding position, which was basically lying down in the back with blankets and pillows over us until the lights disappeared. I don't even know if those were really cop cars, I think, we just panicked any time headlights came around the corner.
So, there you have it, a nice mom's day story for you.
Last night, we checked out the Eagle Rock Music Festival. It has been going on for 9 years and is sponsored by the Eagle Rock Cultural Center. It was actually a pretty fun event. Really easy to get to and ample parking. There was also a shuttle from the Eagle Rock Plaza. The crowd was pretty mixed from people in their 70s to toddlers. We spent the time walking down the block, checking out the bands and people watching.
If you look at the picture above, there's a little girl, probably 5 years old, hanging out at the festival with her guardian. It made me think about how growing up in L.A. is such a different experience from growing up in San Diego or a small town. I saw so many hipster kids. It was like you are born a hipster in that neighborhood. Hipsters of all ages and sizes. It was so bizarre.
Growing up, there were only a handful of "cool" kids in San Diego. At my high school, I can count those kids on one hand. They were stylish, smart, creative and just hip. I, of course, was not one of those kids. I was a freak - awkward, un-stylish, nerdy, etc. But maybe that's why I got along with those kids. We were all freaks together. Freaks Unite!
So seeing these kids, I remembered a story my friend, Jessica, told me about. Jessica is one of the coolest girls I know. I met her in college and we both worked at the radio station. We used to ditch class and drive up to Berkeley and San Francisco so that we could go record shopping. One day, we were talking about how it was growing up in our respective communities, my parents took me to things like the Miramar Air Show or the Navy graduation. We never really went to street fairs...those things my siblings and I did on our own. They dropped us off because they were pretty busy and had to work. But I would hear these stories from Jess about growing up. She would be in Echo Park at a festival or at a music fair and she would meet all these now-famous musicians. It completely tripped me out. But, I guess, that's the thing. In L.A., that is where these people live, it is an entertainment town so there are always things going on (for example, this weekend, L.A. had the Detour Festival, Eagle Rock Music Festival, and the NoHo Art Walk) and a lot of the times you can take your kids if you have them.
I know this happens all over the place but it definitely is a different scene in Los Angeles.
Also, we started talking about how we walk. Do you always walk with a purpose? even when there is no purpose? I ALWAYS walk with a mission. I sometimes will stop and enjoy the day but I rarely take time to do that. I wonder what I look like when I walk? She looks determined. She then reminded me about how when we were kids (i am not sure if this was just a California kid thing) but we were always told that when we walk, we should always look like we know where we are going and that we have purpose. One of the reasons was that no one would bother us and that we would not be harassed. I cannot shake that voice in my head that tells me that I should always look "aware" and "be alert."
We then started talking about the "white van." I am still uncomfortable with the White Van. Does anyone else remember this? Remember how the kids were always getting abducted and those kidnappers were usually in a white van? I started thinking of all the after-school specials. When I see a white van, I cross the street. I cannot help it. It has been ingrained into my mind that the "white van" equals "kidnappers."
I was also a "latch-key kid." Does anyone else remember about how being a "latch-key kid" was "bad"? And that bad things could happen because we were not with adults. Nothing big ever really happened. Once we got attacked while we were in our house but it was not adults we had to worry about. It was the other neighborhood kids. They would not let us out of our house. They took over the hoses in the front and back of the house and any time we tried to get out they would spray the doors. That was the first and only time my sister tried to pull a knife on someone. Ok, it was not that serious. It was actually really funny because she was shouting at them through the mail slot saying she would cut them and showing them the knife..Honestly, I think it was a steak knife.
Anyway, I cannot think of other things that I learned as a kid that I still hold on to. These things only come out every so often, like when a white van is parking next to me...
