Personal Stories

Parallel parking and the Wai Kru Ram Muay

Through an unexpected turn of events, my daughter and I ended up at a Muay Thai Wai Kru seminar today. Muay Thai is a form of pugilistic fighting originating in Thailand wherein participants use punches, kicks, knees, elbows, and trips from the clinch position to defeat one another. Wai Kru, more officially Wai Kru Ram Muay or ‘war dance saluting the teacher,’ is a ritual performed by Muay Thai fighters before a fight. This ritual is a way for the fighter to pay respect to the art, their teacher, and their opponent, and is intended to prepare the fighter for the fight. 

My day started with me attending a jiu-jitsu class with my daughter who played with her cousins while I trained. After my class was over, we were supposed to go somewhere, but before we left, I found out that plans had changed and our presence was no longer required. My wife was sightseeing in Washington DC with her family who is visiting from Washington state, so my daughter and my schedule suddenly opened up. 

As we were leaving the academy, some Muay Thai folks came in and I remembered that there was a seminar today intended to raise money for the girl who was teaching it to fight overseas. My daughter’s cousins were all attending the seminar since they all do Muay Thai and my brother was hosting the event, so I asked my daugher if she wanted to participate also and she said yes. 

The seminar went well and the kids all learned how to do the Wai Kru. At the end, they asked for volunteers to demonstrate what they had all learned, which was a complex series of movements that takes several minutes to perform. My daughter immediately raised her hand. 

A space was made in the middle of the room and my daughter was called out. With a little bit of help, she demonstrated the Wai Kru as everyone watched. They gave her a round of applause and then every kid, one by one, demonstrated to the group what they had learned. After the seminar ended, everyone sparred for a while and then went to get ice cream. 

When we got home, my wife was excited to tell me how proud of herself she was for successfully parallel parking in DC and making it all the way to Eden Center, a giant Vietnamese shopping center in Northern Virginia, and back without getting lost. When my wife finished telling me about her day, my daughter said, “Mommy, I did something brave today too. When the coaches asked for volunteers to demonstrate the Wai Kru in front of the class, even though I was nervous, I raised my hand and I went first. When I was done, my cousin told me that I inspired her and that’s why she went second.” 

I simply smiled. It was a good day and a good reminder that courage manifests in many different forms. For one person, courage is parallel parking in the city or driving to a new place. For another person, courage is raising their hand and stepping up in front of a crowd. We are all scared of something. It is our ability to take action in spite of that fear that makes us brave. Also, bravery is contagious. 

Community sandals

There are many aspects of Cambodian culture that took me a while to get accustomed to. In fact, there are many aspects of Cambodian culture that I’m still not used to, even after being with my Cambodian-American wife for nearly seventeen years. For example, the idea of community sandals still baffles and sometimes irks me.

It is customary in Cambodian culture, as in many Asian cultures, to leave your shoes at the door prior to entering a home. Because of this, outside of any Cambodian home, you will typically find a pile of shoes that will include everything from dress shoes to sneakers, sandals, and flip flops, lots and lots of sandals and flip flops.

Being born and raised in an American where a person’s shoes are only that person’s shoes, my assumption has always been that a person wears only the shoes that belong to him or her. If I wear a pair of shoes to someone’s home and I take them off at their door, I expect that I will find them where I left them when it is time for me to put them back on. However, in my experience, this is not always true with Cambodians, especially when it comes to sandals or flip flops.

I have been at many Cambodian cookouts where I have left my flip flops outside, gone in the house to get something, to use the bathroom, or simply to get out of the heat, only to find that my flip flops were missing when I got back. At first, this thoroughly confused me. I had no idea where they went and I thought I had misplaced them, or that I was losing my mind.

The first time this happened, as I walked around looking for my missing footwear, I saw an older Cambodian woman walking around with giant black flip flops that looked like mine on her tiny Asian feet. I asked my then girlfriend, now wife, if the woman was wearing my flip flops. Confused by my question, she looked at the woman’s feet, then looked at me, and said, “Yeah?”

“They are my flip flops,” I replied, “Doesn’t she have her own shoes?”

“Probably,” she said, “Just grab another pair,” and then she walked away.

My black-and-white mind could not understand what was going on. It did not compute. These were my flip flops. That woman had her own shoes. Why was she wearing mine? Furthermore, why would I want to wear someone else’s shoes? Why would she want to wear my shoes, for that matter?

As I settled down a bit, I began looking for another pair of flip flops that I could wear. This created another problem. I have size thirteen feet and absolutely none of the people at this cookout, especially not the Cambodians, had feet, or shoes, that big. I grabbed the biggest pair of tiny flip flops I could find, squeezed my giant Dutch-American feet into them and shuffled around looking as weird as I felt. Eventually, I got my flip flops back and, the next time I took them off, I was sure to leave them out of the path of any Cambodians who might innocently slip their feet into the most conveniently located pair of shoes.

Over the years, I have come to understand that, while everyone comes to and leaves a Cambodian home with their own shoes, as long as those shoes are not currently being worn, they are community shoes. That is, if a member or guest of that household needs a pair of shoes to complete some task, they are going to grab whichever shoes are most convenient on their way out the door. When they are done, the shoes will be returned, maybe not to the same spot, but they will be returned. There is nothing malicious or inconsiderate about this custom. I suppose many Cambodians just see shoes as a tool, not an extension of personal identity or even property.

I assume it was grace

Thirty days before my nineteenth birthday, I entered rehab. Looking back, I still don’t know how I found the courage to go. At first, I was willing because I had nowhere else to turn. I had no home to speak of. I was barely getting by, working at McDonald’s, making enough money to eat and get high. 

I had been sleeping on friends’ floors and couches for a while, and occasionally in my car that had expired tags to match my suspended license. My mom had let me back in her home for a short period because I was too sick to take care of myself, but I had worn out my welcome once again, especially as far as her husband was concerned. I was running out of options. 

One night, at a Pizza Hut, my parents got together for the first time since their divorce, sat me down, and told me I needed help. My dad’s insurance would cover me going to rehab and they were giving me one last chance to turn my life around. Of course, I was angry and belligerent. This perceived betrayal was more fuel for the fire of resentment and self pity that burned me from the inside out. I said I needed time to think about it and I left. 

I knew I was in trouble. If I rejected their ultimatum, I would have nowhere else to turn. With the exception of one or two people, I had burned all of the bridges that I had crossed. I called one of my last friends up, a girl I met through drugs and drinking, and with whom I lived for a while when I dropped out of school and ran away from home. She had just recently gotten out of rehab and, as soon as she was out, we were drinking and getting high together. 

I told my friend what was going on and she came to get me, or at least I assume she did because all I remember is the two of us sitting on top of Federal Hill, smoking weed, and talking about rehab, and I know I didn’t drive there. I told her my sob story, we commiserated for a while, and then she said, “It might be good for you to take a break for a little while. Go to rehab. It’s like a vacation. I’ll be here when you get out. But, if you don’t want to go, you can stay with me at my mom’s house.” 

Her mom lived in the city. We used to go there to get high with her and she would buy us alcohol, but she was into some things even I wouldn’t touch. She had a drawer full of pills and smoked crack from time to time. That stuff always scared me. Although, with the way I was headed, who knows how many of my “nevers” were really just “not yets.” 

My friend’s offer was tempting. It was a way out. If I accepted, it meant I had a roof over my head for a while longer. It meant I could keep running. But I was worn out. I was tired and beaten. I told her I’d think about it and she took me home. 

What happened next still baffles me. The next day, I called my father and told him I would go to rehab like he said. I guess I was done, but I don’t know how or why. I don’t know what it was that gave me the power to make that decision when I had another option. The only explanation I have is that it was grace. 

My father contacted his insurance company, they set everything up with the facility, and gave me an intake date. I didn’t fight it. Thirty days before my nineteenth birthday, I was driven to rehab and I was given a chance that many do not get. I was given the opportunity to start my life over and, even thought I’m convinced that it was some kind of divine intervention, I took it. 

Far from innocence

When my wife and I were dating, we would talk on the phone for hours every night about everything and nothing. She would whisper from beneath the blankets in her makeshift room in the basement of her cousin’s home, trying to be quiet so that she didn’t wake up her niece and aunt with whom she shared the space. I would whisper back because, the house I lived in was so old and the insulation so non-existent, the neighbor upstairs and I could hear every word the other one said. 

We would often talk for so long that one or both of us would fall asleep on the phone. Not wanting the conversation to end, neither of us wanted to be the first to say goodbye. Having to hang up felt excruciating. It felt like we were being pulled apart, never to speak again. She was the last thing I thought about as I went to sleep and the first thing I thought about when I woke up the next morning. 

Even though I was thirty years old and she was twenty five, this experience made me feel so young and alive, like I was a teenager again discovering love for the first time. There was something truly magical about this time and, even thinking about it now brings a smile to my face. It was innocent and beautiful. We laughed a lot. 

She being from Cambodia and me from the United States, we sometimes had difficulty understanding one another. Her English was not bad by any means, but she didn’t always have the right word or the correct pronunciation for what she wanted to say and my Khmer was way worse than her English. So we would often have to spell words to each other in order to understand what the other was saying. We tried so hard to understand each other. There was so much patience, graciousness, and kindness in those conversations. 

I miss that time, those experiences, and the people we were back then. Writing this, I am reminded of how far we have come together, but also how far away from that innocence we have gotten. It’s bittersweet. It makes me want to do better, to be better for her, for myself, and for us.

French toast and self doubt

This morning, as I was making my daughter breakfast before seeing her off to school, I started to doubt myself as a parent. All of these questions and doubts started to creep in. 

Am I doing this right? What if I get it wrong? Is this food healthy enough for her? Is she getting enough protein so she will get stronger? Is she getting enough carbs for energy? Is she getting too many carbs for the amount of exercise she does? Is she getting too many calories? Or too few?

All of these thoughts were racing through my mind at 6:30am while I was making my daughter french toast and an omelette. The french toast was something my wife had prepped in the refrigerator from leftover bagels we picked up on a recent trip to New Jersey to visit family, and the omelette was just a plain egg omelette.

Then, the thought came to me, “Junk food was basically it’s own food group when you were a kid and you are worried about your daughter’s macronutrients. You are probably doing okay by her.” Standing there in the kitchen by myself, I audibly chuckled.

Life can be extremely serious at times, but there is no reason to make it unnecessarily serious when it need not be. French toast and an omelette is a pretty darn good breakfast. It’s tasty, relatively healthy, and it’s mostly real food.

Yes, macronutrients are important. Of course, whole foods are better than processed foods. But also, we do the best we can with what we have to work with. Life is hard enough without beating myself up unnecessarily for french toast and eggs. 

Take your time

My daughter wanted to make a video to prove to a skeptical cousin that she could solve a Rubiks Cube. I told her the video had to be under two minutes long in order for me to be able to send it.

Until that moment, her fastest time solving her Rubiks Cube was two and a half minutes, but she was up for the challenge. She asked me mix up the puzzle and to set a timer, and then she started solving it.

But a strange thing happened. It was taking her longer to solve it than normal. Frustrated, she said, “The more I worry about my speed, the more mistakes I make.”

That was the problem. Instead of trying to solve the puzzle well, she was trying to solve it quickly. This was causing her to make mistakes she normally would not make.

I began thinking about my experience with jiu-jitsu. While it’s fun to roll (sparring for submissions) at a fast pace and a high intensity, this type of training tends to mask mistakes and it makes it very difficult to notice or fix them in real time. Conversely, rolling slowly, with a focus on clean, precise movements and transitions, allows for more intelligent decisions in the moment and this, somewhat surprisingly, helps to develop skills more quickly.

With this in mind, I told her to slow down and to focus on precision instead of speed. There’s a saying I told her, “‘Slow is smooth and smooth is fast,’ because it takes more time to fix the mistakes you make from rushing than it does to take your time and not make those mistakes.”

She asked me to scramble her Rubiks Cube again and to set a timer. She began solving the puzzle, this time more slowly, with a focus on precision instead of speed. When she announced that she was done, I stopped the clock. To both of our amazement, she had just beaten her best time by nearly forty seconds, and she did it by taking her time.

The way I (mis)remember it

Our memories are not that great, especially under stress. A couple of years ago I competed in a Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament. My first match was in the nogi absolute division (all ranks and all weight classes) against a big guy who I just watched beat his first opponent.

We stepped on the mats, shook hands, and started to grapple. I was there to win and he was too. As soon as we came to grips, I knew he was stronger than me, but I was determined to not back down. We both fought on the feet for hand position and, after a minute or so, I secured the underhook I was looking for, tried to use it to pull him into my half guard, but I slipped off and fell on my back.

He started to try to pass, but I established my guard. We battled it out there for a little while, and then he started to attack my legs. I did a good job defending for a bit, but as I turned out to escape, he caught me in a heel hook and I was forced to tap.

But he didn’t stop. He kept cranking until I tapped again. The match was over and I was injured. My knee and ankle were sore. I took a few more matches before deciding to go home. That’s how I remember it and that’s the way I have told the story since then.

Life is funny though. He and I have since become friends. I have visited his academy and he has visited mine. His daughter and mine play together while we train. Tonight, he came to my academy and taught a class.

We were talking to one of the new students about how we met and the match we had. I mentioned having to tap twice and he politely objected, stating that he may have been overly enthusiastic with the submission, but that I only tapped once and he let go of the submission immediately after I did.

We went back and forth for a bit before finally pulling up the match on my phone. We watched the whole thing and, at the end, when we got to the part where he applied the heel hook, there it was, as plain as day, I tapped the floor and then tapped him, and he let go.

I was wrong. I have been wrong for two years. But, up until that moment, I was certain that things happened the way I remembered. I could picture it in my mind. It’s the story I told multiple times to multiple people about how we met, but I misremembered the most important part, the part I thought I remembered most clearly. He pointed it out, I apologized, and then he helped me clean the academy before we both took our daughters home.

Life is funny and our memories are often based more on stories we tell ourselves about what we experienced than they are about the actual facts of the experience. So be generous with the stories you tell. You’ll be happier and you’ll make more friends along the way.

Anxious or simply exhausted

Have you ever been so tired that you thought you were having an anxiety attack?

I recently drove my wife and daughter to New Jersey to visit family. We had an event to be at by 11am and it usually takes about four hours to get there. In order to account for the unexpected, we woke up at around 5am to leave by 6am.

The trip went smoothly and we were actually early, so early in fact that I has time to stop by a jiu-jitsu academy I’ve visited a few times prior for some morning training before going to our event.

We went to our event, grabbed some food, and then went to our hotel to check in. I tend not to eat or drink very much while I’m driving because food makes me tired and fluids make me have to pee, both of which make the trip take longer.

This, combined with waking up early, and the general stress of being on the road all morning, and I was in a somewhat fragile state. As a highly sensitive person, I had put a lot of strain on my body and mind over the course of the day.

My wife took my daughter to the hotel pool and I laid down for a nap. But as I laid there trying to rest, I was struck by a wave of what felt like anxiety. I hadn’t had an anxiety attack in a long time so this disturbed me, but I allowed it to wash over me as I laid there with my eyes closed.

I began thinking about what could have caused the anxiety I was feeling and I concluded that I wasn’t over-stressed or worried. In fact, nothing was really wrong at all. I was just tired, so tired that my body and mind had had enough.

I had basically pushed myself as far as I could go and now I was feeling the effects of that. What felt like anxiety was really just me being overly tired, dehydrated, and hungry. I wasn’t having an anxiety attack. I just needed some food, water, and a nap.

Growing feet

Did you know that your feet can get bigger as an adult? I had no idea. I assumed that, once I reached a certain age, my shoe size was fixed. Apparently, I was wrong.

For years, I wore size 12 shoes. It didn’t matter what brand or style, size 12 fit me. Then, one day, certain shoes, shoes I had been wearing for a long time, started to feel snug and uncomfortable around my toes, so I had to switch brands.

A few years later, I began noticing that all of my sneakers were becoming increasingly uncomfortable. This caused me to buy my first pair of wide running shoes. That helped for a while, but not for long. So I decided to try a different size shoe. I got a pair of size 13’s and, lo and behold, they fit me.

Many size 13 shoes later and I began having the same problem. Frustrated, I went to get my feet measured at the local running store. The gentleman helping me told me that he wasn’t surprised that my shoes were uncomfortable because they were 13’s and my feet were a half size bigger than that.

In spite of my beliefs, over the past two decades my feet have grown a full size and a half. I attribute it to the amount of time I spend barefoot on the soft jiu-jitsu mats, but it doesn’t really matter why my feet have gotten bigger.

What matters is the fact that my beliefs and my inability to see past them have caused me years worth of unnecessary pain and discomfort, the solution to which was merely asking for help and accepting that I was wrong.

How are your beliefs keeping you unnecessarily uncomfortable?

Going up slides

My wife and I recently took our daughter on a roadtrip to Philadelphia to do some sightseeing and to eat at a few destination food spots.

On the way back to the car from Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, Isaiah Zagar’s breathtaking mosaic masterpiece and art gallery, we stopped by a local park for my daughter to play for a bit.

As my daughter spun around on the merry-go-round, I heard a mother scold her child for trying to run up the slide. “We don’t go up slides,” she said, “We go down slides.”

This got me thinking about how we view the world. If we only use things in exactly the way they are designed to be used, we are probably going to miss out on a lot of new and interesting experiences, not to mention opportunities to explore and innovate.

Especially as we get older and risk losing our curiosity and playfulness to practicality and cynicism, perhaps we could all do well to run up a slide or two every now and then just to see what happens.