Begin at the beginning: A Blog (alternate titles considered: Hogarth, the Hungry Hobo Hungarian)

Reader if I may , I must inform you that throughout my childhood, I was unique among many other children in that I was able to claim that I had attended no less than 5 different schools in a meager 8 years of education. It was not, of course, a function of necessity rather than a consequence of circumstances. In 1st grade my parents got divorced. At the time, within the Vietnamese community this was a significant and horrible taboo. Though I did not notice it at the time, I was later informed by my mother that in those years so strong was the taboo against divorce that strangers would call our house to place curses on us, my mother's children, condemning us to futures of unavoidable suffering and misery.

While I did not yet notice the phone (too preoccupied was I with the wonders of the electric keyboard that played hits from the early 90s such as Rick Astley's "Together Forever") What I did notice were the consequences of the communal rejection my mother suffered at the hands of the larger Vietnamese community (of which I henceforth ascribe the name "The Vmob", a portmonteau of "V" the first letter of the ethnic designation "Vietnamese" and "mob" as in, a mob). The first noticeable thing that I can recall is often my mother would stay up late at night crying, sometimes hugging me close to her while I wondered quietly what was going on, why she was crying, and why was I up at the godawful hour of 10 PM (I tired earlier then).

The second thing that I shall recall for the purposes of this story, which for all sakes and purposes shall be called "A Story", is that in the transfer between 2nd and 3rd grade, there was a shift in the administration at Northwood Elementary School in Irvine, CA 92620 (I feel no need to protect the anonymity of that institution which - though they are just rumors - is purported to have placed lead in the paint of the poor black children) from the previous principal (I've forgotten her name, let us just call her Mrs. White) to a more stringent, more moral, more disciplined sort of administration in the form of a single individual (as i've also forgotten her name, let us call her Mrs. Shit). Suffice to say, Mrs. Shit represented to me, and to the greater of Northwood Elementary School, a cold pall over the (well, let us be frank reader, nothing changed at the school in the first year except for the icy aura that emanated from the new principal. Individuals who have been within 500 metres of Dick Cheney can testify that a human being can in fact emanate such an aura) previously lighter tone of the campus.

While some might point to this description as hyperbolic (in fact the case might be made that the entirety of this blog is hyperbolic), I assure you that at the time, as a 9 year old boy I often took great efforts to crawl beneath the sideboard, out of sight of the principal as to not stare directly into her eyes and be turned to stone. Jokes aside, I did try my best to make like a ninja and be unseen by the principal. She regarded me with such a look of utter disgust and venom that it removed what little warmth there was in my soul and spit it into my face where it burned and metaphorically seared the soft fleshy parts of my eyes. Later, I discovered that this look was informed by bigotry, but we shall return to that point later reader.

As for the principal herself, she - and my 3rd grade teacher - provided the catalyst for my first in medias rex transfer from one school to the next. At the behest of my 3rd grade teacher (who seemingly found a 3rd grade asian child with a vibrant imagination and aspirations of becoming a cowboy as infuriating as red would be to a bull in a bullfighting ring) my mother and I met in the principal's office to discuss certain techniques that could be used to reign in my clear and distinct lack of respect for authority (I was not good at PE, I much rather preferred sitting in the shade thinking about the episodes of Ghostwriter and Wishbone i'd seen the day earlier). The principal suggested that perhaps I was acting out as a direct consequence of my mother's divorce from my father and that a possible solution, for the good of the child was for my mother and father to be rejoined. After all, statistically speaking, single mothers are unfit to raise their own children and their offspring grow up to be delinquents, drug addicts, or worse yet: Democrats.

If this sentiment that was expressed to my mother seems at all harsh and unprovoked, reader, let me inform you of a previous incident that could have, and probably did inform the principal's attitude towards my mother and I.

See earlier that same year I'd been called into the principal's office for some entirely innocent reason. See, somebody had informed me that the F-word rhymed with "duck", and being the super genius that I was, I had run down the alphabet until I'd struck gold with the word. That is why I was in the principal's office. The other thing you must know, reader, is that I was very fond of Calvin and Hobbes. In 3rd grade it was a major pastime of my mother, myself, and my siblings to drive down to the wooded end of Irvine in the appropriately named Woodbridge, by the artificial lake and peruse the Barnes and Nobles, my mother reading the jokes from Calvin and Hobbes to a 9, 7, and 5-year old. One of these jokes involved a punchline where Calvin called his mother a communist. I, attempting the lighten the situation, asked the principal if she was a Communist.

Mrs. Shit, a Reaganite, immediately called my mother in from work to demand to know where her son got the giant cajones to insinuate that the principal was a communist. So, as it was, this previous incident now informed the injustice that was being inflicted against my mother. Suffice to say, it was more than a straw that broke the camel's back, and by the end of 3rd grade plans had already been put in motion to transfer my enrollment from Northwood Elementary School to Westwood Basics Plus, further away from the house. I believe my 3rd grade year was best summarized by my single exclamation at its conclusion. I only had one exuberant sentence for my mother as she came to pick me up from Northwood Elementary School for the last time.

"Mom! I passed third grade!!!!"