Well at least for now…

There’s always this worry about the other side. What if Chinese radio starts talking about how incest and animal coupling can happen? What if there is more propaganda about same-sex parents with bad parenting? What if the line can’t be held?

Unlike the rest of twitterverse…and other social media, I was unaware that today was the important day for Proposition 8, passed in California in 2008. But when the proposition was struck down, I immediately heard about it.

And cheers all around! I was intrigued with the one line in the NYTimes The Kids Are All Right movie review: [It] starts from the premise that gay marriage, an issue of ideological contention and cultural strife, is also an established social fact.

When will it be?

And yet, I am always still embarrassed about my first encounter with LGBT. Like many people…in the 80s and 90s…and even my parents, the idea of LGBT didn’t really exist. It wasn’t at the top of mind. I had very few friends in high school, but there was one that I trusted a lot. She was smart, quick, funny. She was awkward as me, but wasn’t as fearful and anxious. One day, she appeared in history class with her head shaved. I asked why and she told me that it was because she was gay. Not prepared for the revelation and surprised, I laughed instead. And for the rest of the period, whenever she looked back at me…I started laughing.

I know that there are some members in my family that don’t understand. Yet. In college, my parents were very reluctant when I had declared that I wanted to live with a male roommate. When I told them that my male roommate would be gay…they paused…and paused…I think…that’s ok?

When I used to have a 24-minute daily commute, I took it for granted. Now I labor over my long commute, the excuse for not doing the following. And yet is it a justified excuse?

What else am I missing?

In elementary, middle, high school…I got horrible grades for…participation. C would usually be the score, because how could teachers fail me in that if I did well in everything else?

You can’t annoy people by saying nothing at all.

For so many years, I thought it was a nurture thing. If my parents had encouraged me…if I wasn’t so rejected…but then I met Chris.

Surely, an Asian parent can’t encourage a kid to be extroverted, talkative…and all-around obnoxious, right?

In grade school, he did well in every subject. He was the Hermione Granger. The one who would shoot his hand up in class and wave wildly, “Pick me! I know the answer!!!” Because he often did. But at the same time, it was also analogous to a comment on one-too-many report cards: “Talks excessively”.

Not only that, he liked talking to everyone. Can you imagine being on an airplane where two 8-year-old kids kept talking and talking…when later you find out that they didn’t even know each other before boarding the plane…and they sat together because their parents wanted to sit in first class…and that one of the kids was the biggest talker of all?

So then the argument must suggest that it is nature.

Of course, due to nurture or in our own case…perhaps our understanding of environment and what society expects of us, Chris became quieter and reserved…while I found ways to express myself if not loudly.

But yet talking to some…is a sign of courageousness, bravery. It’s expression. It also means that it is a sign of self-confidence.

During my last year in college, I had been going through some rough times. But then I had a revelation one day…what if I told people what I really was feeling? Granted, there were a few times that it backfired, but…in all…it suddenly really did make me feel better by talking excessively.