Thang Nguyen 555

First was the ball. Then the radio. Last but not least, the guitar and the Larousse (French-Vietnamese).

Water needed to be hauled in.

No fridge. No TV. No nothing.

By the time the walls got another coat of paint, and the paintings up, then it’s time to flee.

A lifetime of memories – clustered around school and after-school, with the elephant (war) in the room.

Boom! our next-door neighbour came home in a casket.

Bang! a friend lost an eye in the front.

And “Tous les garçons the mon age, se promène dans la rue”….”Ce sois, je serais la plus belle pour aller dancer”…

I have just learned today that our flamboyant X-VP once came back for a visit to our high-school; red-carpet home-coming.

Must be proud all around.

One of us. Not without a few jinks.

From the black/white photos (things we lost in a hurry) to the appetite for reading (foods for thoughts), we willed ourselves not to “live by bread alone”.

We came from an all-male school ( later, co-ed on the third shift).

The school itself was relocated, inter-and-intra regionally; with multiple name changes.

Analog childhood.

PE time was far away, shared ride and shared facilities. Activities were off-site and outsourced: at the beach, at a stadium and shared auditorium.

Television itself was low-tech engineering…with the whole city waiting for the show to start . And when it did, it was not without the flag and the anthem “Calling on all citizens,,,,stand up and respond to the call, from the sacred mountain to shining seas”… Even at the movies, we couldn’t fast forward those Ministry of Propaganda documentaries to the main feature.

One needs to be told and retold of our national mythology i.e. we were descendants of Dragon and Fairy Angel. Half went on to be mountaineers. The rest, seafarers.

It’s the latter that escaped by seas, by boat, and now their descendants are Boat People’s VietAms.

Meanwhile, the Montagnard, Hmong and other ethnic minorities were left behind, despite their helpful assistance to the American allies.

An Analog childhood. Some even slept next to the dictionary, learning a page or two for sedatives. Instead of I-phones, I made toy telephone out of condensed milk cans. Instead of drones, it’s newspaper airplanes and kites.

Hunger and heat were constant companion.

So was hope. That some day, we will prosper, morphing and adapting to full digital future in foreign land (Australia, Europe and N. America)

We would self-transform to become leaders we were meant to be.

So will our children and children’s children. Just like those Europeans on the boats, bigger but slower ones.

They, despite their shortcomings, and humble beginnings, had an early start: from the Hudson River to the Hoover Dam.

From the Gold Rush to Rush Hour.

But give us some time. It takes time. To go full digital. To go Prime.

A picture which triggered this blog: my analog counterparts, browsing the children book section in our town bookstore. We were all eager to read, to learn, to discover for ourselves: shades of lie and versions of truth.

We heard propaganda on the radio. We heard instructions that urged “Farewell to arms”..

By then, having witnessed the Burning Monk, the execution of a VC, the assassination of our 1st President, and successive military coups. In that context, we grew up quick and finally, we bolted and bailed.

No more lies. No more of our needless offerings as sacrificial lambs. No more “honorable” (delusional) settlement.

Our alumnus/VP-Premier knew this, then landed on the USS Kirk, then handed over his handgun (John-Wayne gift)…No red-carpet there. Just the stripping process (from army to civilian).. vetting and immigration process (finger printed).

“We have been waiting to hand over the government since this morning”…..1963 Big Minh had been waiting til 75 for the hand-over part…only to be publicly humiliated (You guys don’t have anything left to hand over). One-upmanship.

Oh well, I have been waiting all my life to hand over my analog childhood in exchange for full digital future.

To hear and see everything that is out there: truth and lies. Reality and Alternate Reality, classified or de-classified.

Fool me once, it’s your fault. Fool me twice, it’s my fault.

I have tried my best, given limited tools and times. Growing up analog was hard.

Growing up analog in war, with tiny PX-issued peanut butter cans was doubly hard.

Yet somehow we managed. My friends have done me proud. Now, it’s my turn to face my own spreadsheet (see it’s an analog analogy again). See where the bottlenecks lie, what the clusters of data indicate and run a SWoT analysis on my near-term future.

I won’t look back. Passe. Alain Delon, Brigitte Bardot, etc.. don’t even look at themselves any longer.

Instead, I cherish those selective memories, with a heart full of gratitude for the many hands that have extended to me. Thank you WordPress, for instance…Mac Pro, Spectrum internet, contact lenses manufacturers…and most of all, the vaccines.

When we start counting the blessings, they are like stars dotted our sky..and we know, we are just dust…can’t be more analog that dust.

“When I was young, I listened to the radio, waiting for my favourite song..I sing along, I made me smile”.

Just a radio, then a guitar and finally the Larousse.