It’s get-the-nachos-ready-I’m-on-the-couch-if-you-need-me time :)
I lived in Columbus for about four years from around first grade to sixth. I had a mushroom bowl cut like every ugly Chinese kid. I wasn’t ugly though I remember thinking my thighs were distinctly large. Looking back at photo albums, it would appear as though I enjoyed photography and posing immensely during this period, but the real truth is that my parents then enjoyed photo-taking, and now they don’t: the result is that for about five years to date I haven’t really had a decent set of photos. It’s okay; I don’t mind: I just hope that when I’m eighty and don’t remember a thing I won’t think I went straight from being a prepubescent ugling to a forty-something mommie with uglings of her own (forty is when I’ve arbitraily decided I’m going to start being in photos again).
I lived in the central-but-not-predominantly downtown part of Columbus. My parents opened a restaurant named Little Dragons; they had some company paint “Authentic Chinese Food” on the window even though they knew perfectly well that the food wasn’t authentic (their freshly-imported brothers — my two uncles — were the chefs) and it was barely even Chinese (Kung-pow chicken, chow-mein: these were the staples of badly-translated American attempts at Oriental cuisine.) They poured their heart into this business: we invested probably what was 80, 90% of our savings which were not much to begin with. We were undeniably poor: my dad was a student at OSU (see Buckeyes, above) on a tuition waiver and my mom, pre-restaurant, worked at a dry-cleaners. No matter what the weather was like, no delivery went undelivered: my dad drove in frost, rain, sleet, and varying states of frustration to go send food to the customers. Sometimes, because the checks they paid in bounced, we actually lost money: nights my parents would count down to the dollar bills alone on the empty counter.
It is no surprise that the restaurant was a huge failure for them. Yet even though I knew they went through a lot of stress during this period, Ohio for me was amazingly wonderful. I had a number of friends: one girl who looked like a chipmunk was very nice, as was another young girl whose feet were twice as large as mine. See, elementary school kids are a fun bunch, especially before girls learn to be horrible to each other and before boys are vaccinated of cooties. I was even popular with the teacher, a Mrs. Roscoe who smelled like coffee and Werther’s caramel candy: when I left for California, she gave me two nice, reversible journals which had quotes by Emily Dickinson written on the inside binding. It is amazing I remember all of this, especially since (see my first post, below) I have routinely abandoned every diary I start.
I’ve never been back to Ohio, though I think about it every so often. Ohio has come to my attention recently more than usual, firstly because of Angela Keslar, whom, despite our shared state I prayed to any diety who would listen to PLEASE get rid of; and secondly because of, well..
See top photo of this post :)
