Chinese Education

First Grade
     I sat alone on the bench at recess, reading a Harry Potter book. The other boys laughed at me. They stole my book and began to play monkey in the middle, tossing the book just beyond my outstretched fingers. My Chinese name was Dum Gai, Sometimes it was Wai Yu So Tan or Yu Stin Ki Pu. One day I had enough of their taunting and punched a boy named Austin and left bruises on his face. It almost looked like he was wearing face paint for a Chinese opera.

Second Grade
     Marcella Gavelis made me stay in for recess ten day straight.
     "Say you're sorry," she said.
     "For what Miss. Gavelis?"
     "Everything," she said and made me hang from a pull-up bar, monkey style for 15 minutes. I learned that all the blood rushing into my head can make one pretty dizzy.
     Once, she gave the class a math test but set me aside and gave me a test that was for students in Algebra. When I answered all the questions correctly with work included, she made me mark every answer wrong.

Third Grade
     My traditional Chinese music career began and ended with my very first instrument: the Dizi.
     As I walked around the classroom playing my music, Mrs. Olken stopped my playing and confiscated my instrument because my music was too oriental.
     In third grade, though, I stood alone in the corner, faced the wall, and waited for the punishment to end.
     I'm still waiting.

Fourth Grade
     "You should be an engineer when you grow up," Mr. Olken told me.
     "Why should I be a doctor?" I asked Mr. Olken.
     "So you can go back to China and help the country. So you can develop more efficient technology and reduce pollution."
     That was the year that my father smoked ten packs of cigarettes a day and the same year that my mother started three hundred different Chinese calligraphy paintings but never finished any. They stayed in different rooms in our house and cried savagely.
     I ran home after school, heard their Chinese tears, and looked in the mirror. Engineer David, I called myself, invented an education, talked to my reflection. Engineer David to the CEO's office.

Fifth Grade
     I jumped in the pool for my first time and swam across the entire pool. No. I didn't make it across the pool, almost drowned actually, and the life guard had to jump in an save me.
     But it felt great, my body slicing through the water. It was science, surface tension. It was beautiful.
     At the same moment, my cousin Keene Lum swallowed LSD from the bottle. His ears rang, his mouth was dry, and everyone seemed so far away.
     But it felt great, that buzz in his head, all the colorful sights and sounds. It was chemistry, biology. It was beautiful.
    Oh, do you remember those sweet almost innocent choices that Chinese boys were forced to make?