The Wandering Mind of a Rolling Stone

Our strongest memories are tied to smell and taste largely because those senses are tied more directly to the amygdala and hippocampus than the others; the hippocampus, in particular, is the part of the brain that transfers short-term memory to long-term memory. There's a point to all this. Supermarkets loom largely in my own developmental memories; it was rare that my mother went out to get groceries without me and/or my sister growing up and she worked at one herself during her time her in the United States. Perhaps the most vibrant memories, in that regard, tend to come from Asian supermarkets because they're so markedly different than something like Safeway or Giant. And a lot of that absolutely comes from the smells and tastes from that little slice of East Asia that had come to Northern Virginia. Walking in the door, you're being greeted with a whole host of aromas that aren't particularly common in America; a blend of garlic powder, Korean red pepper, and some...

One of the nicest bits of kismet in my life is that my 21st birthday fell on a weekend. What that meant is that the gloves could come off but I also wanted to enjoy the event so that was something I was aware of going in. I had a couple of close calls during my first semester of college so I largely abstained from controlled substances those first couple years really only drinking overseas when the age limit was no longer really an issue. That meant my tolerance was incredibly low which probably would make the whole thing more (more likely less) memorable. While a handful of my friends were older than me, it was decided to keep the action to a house party rather than a bar to accommodate the most people; birthdays are always meant to be spent with friends. So we stocked up with enough wine, beer, and liquor to satisfy approximately a dozen people for a full weekend within reason. A bit surprisingly, I largely kept to wine that weekend. I had just come back from a study abroad trip ...

There was always something about having a birthday smack dab in the middle of the dog days of summer. Being a couple weeks out from the beginning of school, a lot of families would try to get that one last vacation in right around the time I hit a birthday. Which isn't to say that birthdays were necessarily spent alone but it taught me pretty early on that people aren't going to drop what they're doing just to ring another one in; they've got priorities and prior commitments and that's absolutely okay. And as much as I enjoy a good birthday, it really is just another candle on the cake; at the end of the day, the only thing that changes is the date. Before we moved to Fairfax, a lot of birthdays were spent in random historical sights in the greater DC and Virginia areas. A free, air-conditioned museum is a great place to keep a toddler occupied in the middle of August so my parents and grandparents would take me to various Smithsonian Institute facilities includin...

Looking back, I spent a lot of time in the library growing up. Well, libraries. Growing up poor in the war-torn streets of Seoul, my mom had found solace in the written page and she wanted to pass the value of reading along to her kids. As such, some of my earliest memories are in the Arlington Public Library surrounded by the comforting smell of musty old volumes stacked in labyrinthine shelves. By first grade, I could actually read pretty well relative to age and by third grade my mom and I would start to have these reading contests. We would cycle between choosing a book and seeing who could finish it first and then have a conversation about it over tea like some sort of two-person book club. The real kicker is that if I won, my mom would treat me to comic books, trading cards, and pogs. My mom worked over forty hours a week and did the heavy lifting when it came to the household; I always won. I know now that she never intended to win but really just to get me to read. The flip...

I don't think it's really telling tales out of school when I say that there's always a lot of musical energy crackling under the surface for me. It's not entirely uncommon to see me stop in mid-sentence when a song starts or softly sing along with whatever's playing in the background. Sometimes not so softly. That energy and appreciation carries over to dancing. I've never really had any formal dance training but that sure as hell has never stopped me before. I would tell you that a background of growing up with old Hollywood movies is what informed that. The big, showstopping musicals of yesteryear were definitely on steady rotation. Fred Astaire dancing with Ginger Rogers in Top Hat . Gene Kelly's Gershwin-fueled fever dream in An American in Paris . Dick Van Dyke leading a troupe of chimneysweeps across the rooftops of London in Mary Poppins . But I honestly think it comes from Michael Jackson. The late 80s was the last real period that my parents l...

I didn't learn how to swim until I was five. I have no idea if that's early or late, I don't go around asking people when they learned how to swim. But I can tell you I didn't learn how to swim until I was five. Looking to get out of the hustle and bustle of Arlington especially as my sister and I were starting to get older, my family moved deeper into the Virginia suburbs with our new home placed within walking distance of all the major schools, a lake, and several neighborhood pools; the closest of which had a beautiful view of the lake from its wooden deck. I had definitely been in pools before the age of five with those comedically oversized water wings on my arms but this was it, I was going to swim unaided. And, within a matter of weeks, I did; it's not all that hard to figure out. The one thing I've always had trouble with is the diving board. Every time I try to do a proper dive off one even all these years later I just smack right on the surface of t...

If June and August were for the beach, July was for camping. I joined the Boy Scouts almost as an afterthought; all the either guys in the neighborhood had joined up a year or two before me and it just seemed like a good way to tag along. We would do all sorts of community service activities around the neighborhood fixing up parks and schoolyards and all that but the real highlight, of course, was the camping. One of the big benefits of living in Northern Virginia is that a little over an hour west and you were deep in the Appalachians. In my five years as a scout of various rank, I laid down canvas in Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Sometimes there wasn't canvas at all and it was just me in a light sleeping bag under that clear summer sky. Sometimes it was in the dead of winter and you'd have to make sure you had a decent bedroll otherwise the cold earth would drain all the heat right out of your body overnight. I remember once accidentally ...