P. Cat Blargh

When we were young, we used to come out to Chinatown a lot on Sundays. One of my favorite memories of this was not the wet, dirty streets which constantly smelled like raw fish, or the huge buckets filled with live bullfrogs, nor was it even the experience of being in the city.

No, no, it was the time we were walking near our family friend’s apartment, near Confucius Plaza. Being that this was more than ten years ago, my little brother was at that age in which holding hands was a must. So Pop was pulling on my brother’s hand, walking him along, while the rest of us walked slightly ahead between the short, squat poles set in the cement- the ones that are there to make sure cares didn’t drive up onto the sidewalk.

I do not recall the moment in which this happened, but I do remember turning around to witness the aftermath. In short, my dad had walked my brother into a pole.

“What are you doing?” my mother yelled, as she bent down to examine the victim. It was very apparent that my brother had indeed walked straight into the pole- there was a straight gash which bled slightly, centered right between his eyes. Surprisingly, perhaps as shocked as the rest of us, he didn’t cry at all and just blinked as our mom fussed over him. “What’s wrong with you?” she continued, “How did you do that?”

“Well how was I supposed to know he was just gonna walk straight into it?” Pop cried defensively, “It’s not my fault your son’s not smart enough to walk around it himself.” Meanwhile, on the sidelines, my other brother and I rolled on the ground laughing.

This is one of those stories in which we would indiscriminately bring up every time my dad would do something wrong and he would, once again, try to pass the blame onto us. It served as a perfect line of defense in saying, ‘No dad, just like that other time, it is your fault.’ At least until the day he admits that yes, he was the main reason why my brother walked into the pole on that fateful day (if we ignore the fact that my little brother wasn’t the smartest kid in the world either).

Our new apartment had six rooms, one of them significantly bigger than the rest. However, there were only four of us. The quest to find two people to fill out those empty rooms (thus making rent cheaper for the rest of us) began.

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It was Sandy, LA, John and I who discovered the apartment at the end of our freshman year. We were getting desperate, as that many of our friends who weren’t living on campus again had already found places to live for the next year. The housing lottery has long since past, and we had nothing to fall back on if our search ended in failure. We have already taken tours of many old houses and apartments, contacted countless of landlords and had a list of potentials a page and a half long.

We were close to panicking, as finals rounded the corner, and we still didn’t have a place to call our future home. So when the landlord Gary showed us a large six room apartment on Hidden Street, we lapped it up right away, giddy with the prospect of living there.

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Well now that my plot in making fun of my dad is compromised (for now), it’s time for the 44.

Sophomore year of college, I took a beginner’s creative writing class.  At the time I was living in what normal people would refer to as ‘a shit hole,’ lovingly referred to by it’s shortened address: 44 Hidden.  And because I just couldn’t think of anything else, I chose to write about my living situation.

What I handed in by the end of the semester were about four short vignettes about the good ol’ forty four,  but I enjoyed recording these events,  so I just kept going. 

It’s a little weird for me to dig this out again after I found them buried in my hard drive, since it’s been a while, and also a couple of these I wrote not long after it actually happened and they seem so inconsequential now; but at the very least, serve as a bit of ‘blast from the past,’ amusement.

No.  Seriously.  You weren’t supposed to be smart enough to find this.  So stop reading.

 Not cool Pops, not cool.

 So this isn’t a dad story, but it does serve as a background to my upbringing, i.e. I grew up on a farm, and my dad is a farmer, which makes him all the more funnier.
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It’s not very typical to hear about a girl like me growing up on a farm. Specifically, a farm that sold Chinese vegetables. In New Jersey.

After the initial shock that New Jersey is not indeed one huge city state consisting of smoke spewing factories, garbage and Italians, comes the surprise that farms still exist. For some reason, people tend to do that, just like how people tend to forget that somewhere between the east coast and the west coast there’s a whole bunch of states above Texas.

“What kind of animals do you have?” is usually the first question, because obviously all farms must have some kind of animal residing on the property somewhere.

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During the summers of my highschool years, I never tried that hard to get myself a retail job. My reasoning had to do with the fact that I’ve learned from previous experience that they made me miserable. Also, I was a poster child for procrastination, and well on my way on becoming one for laziness as well. But most importantly, I always had a backup job ready, right here, on the farm.

When I was younger, I worked on the farm all the time, unaware of child labor laws. I made the wooden boxes they used for packing at ten cents a pop. I also constructed the wax-covered cardboard boxes as well, and helped pack the vegetables right before we loaded them onto the pallets and into the truck, taking breaks by wandering into our walk-in freezers to cool down and pretend to inspect the earthy smelling boxes of produce. Occasionally I would get called into the field where I could idly pick vegetables until I could no longer stand swimming through the thick, humid air and retreat home. I would help out my brother whenever he broke the plow or rototiller by avoiding that mess completely. Late afternoons were spent lounging on the little hill created by the house’s septic tank, listening to the hum of the Mack truck as people loaded it up by hand trucks in seemingly endless cycles. These were rather carefree summers without schedules and time tables, so why not?

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So why dad stories?

It’s a not so strange thing to do, to focus on your own life and your relationships with your family members,  but this is not what it is about.  I have a healthy relationship with both of my parental units, but there’s nothing really big about our family that warrants some intense chronicle/Lifetime movie in the making.  No,  this is just me making fun of my dad.

He was once the figure of discipline and fear in the household,  bringing fear and the eventual beat down when my brothers and I didn’t play the piano/finish homework/watched tv when we weren’t supposed to. Plastic hangers and wooden yard sticks were broken across our asses, by the hand of my father, and we would start screaming in fear the second he threatened to take his belt off at us.  Usually our mom was the big boss of the house- she’d do all the yelling and threatening; But we knew we were in deep shit when she got him involved in our arguments- you know that feeling of regret that hits you the second you cross the line and all that awaited you was an ass kicking? It was like that.

But then we grew up.

And that was when we realized that it wasn’t just us, but all children were mortally afraid of our dad.   We would laugh at this revelation, since upon growing up, my dad, or pops as I would come to refer to him as, was actually a very goofy man with a strange sense of humor- a very easy target of mockery when it came down to it.

I would know since I’ve come to understand that we share that humor (and nobody understands me or my dad) and a lot of the times, the things my pops generally do are just kind of… well, funny.

And that’s why I write about my dad.

‘I am Pillowcat’ was a Merit award winner at 2D OR NOT 2D Animation Festival and then went on to get a Golden Pencil award for Student Film/ Best Animation in a Film.

WOOOOooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOoooooooOOOOOOO~!!

 In other news, while I’m still riding this sense of accomplishment, the job hunt is on. Yes, six months after everybody else started/completed…  I was always a slow starter.

I suppose I should start this off with the obligatory introduction:

In attempt to keep my portfolio website clean and unfettered with my personal crap (i.e. professional), I decided to push all of that to here. Also, I sort of need a dumping ground for things that I’m not too sure about, like photos, sketches and dad stories.

I think I’m more excited about the stories about my father more than the potential artwork.