The World According to Dave: The Babysitter

by David Yoo

By the time our son Griffin turned 18 months old, we still had never used a babysitter, and I had serious cabin fever. Despite feeling it, too, my wife was leery about leaving our son in the hands of anyone not related to us by blood. She reasoned that her parents visited us all the time, but I argued that their visits didn’t qualify technically as “babysitting,” given that my wife refused to ask them to just sit in our house so we could venture out at night. To her that would feel like we were exploiting them, even though that’s the whole point of having grandparents in the first place—to exploit them! Alas, before I knew it, a year-and-a-half had passed, and we were chomping at the bit to leave the house past sundown for once.

My wife’s trepidation to let a stranger watch Griffin was topped by my desperation to get out of the house, just the two of us, and I finally convinced her to let me find a babysitter. The next afternoon I took Griffin for a stroll around the neighborhood and introduced myself to a really tall teenage girl sitting on her front stoop, reading a book. It turned out the girl, Rachel, was an experienced babysitter and seemed perfect—an old soul who loved math and science and was even in the Girl Scouts! Continue Reading »

For a good chunk of my adult life I was adamant about never taking pictures because I was mortified of upholding any stereotype attached to Asians—in this case, the widely held image of Asian tourists clicking away en masse at every statue, monument or waterfall known to man.

This goes hand in hand, of course, with the fact that I grew up in a mostly white environment; therefore, any action on my part that called added attention to my race seemed counterproductive to my goal of trying to fit in.

Countless times, I’ve watched people gawk at Asian tourists as they relentlessly take photos of themselves doing the most banal things. Then there was the time I was part of a group photo in front of a restaurant in Atlanta. When someone from the group asked a passing white guy to take our picture, he muttered, “Gee, a group of Asians taking pictures? That’s a first!” My cheeks boiled.

But the worst incident occurred at the Grand Canyon years ago, as I watched in reverent silence with all the other vacationers as the sun began slowly descending behind the far rim in the distance. The quiet experience felt almost religious. That is, until it was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a raucous pack of Japanese. They chattered. napped a zillion photos. Posed in front of an oppressive wave of white flashing lights with thumbs-up signs as if to say, “The Grand Canyon: It’s A-OK!”

That evening, the ambivalent Asian in me refused to take pictures of the deep Arizona gorge, lest I get mistaken for a member of that group, and years later, I only have foggy memories of what the sunset looked like.

Yet today, much has changed. In fact, there’s been a fullblown transformation, as I feel—for the first time in years—the desire to take pictures approximately every 14 seconds.

The subject of these photos: my baby, Griffin.

Still, at first, I was hesitant to do so in public. But the non-cell-phone owning luddite in me quickly observed that the culture of photography has shifted dramatically. Now, everyone—with the help of smart phones and digital cameras—is picture crazy. And picture-post crazy, for that matter.

Realizing this, I’ve made peace with my long dormant insecurities and now embrace picture-clicking with a paparazzi-like fervor.

And like everyone else on the planet, I blissfully post oodles of photos on Facebook, feeling not the least bit embarrassed or narcissistic. To get to a place where I cared less about racial perceptions felt like a huge step forward as I left the younger, self-loathing Asian in me behind, for good. Becoming a parent—or perhaps just the passage of time—has allowed me to let go of this lifelong urge to discredit the Asian tourist stereotype.

But little did I know I was simply embracing another.

The other day I posted a fresh batch of Griffin photos, and shortly thereafter received a message from a friend.

“Hi Dave! So many pictures. You’re such the typical parent, huh?!” she wrote.

Dangit.

by David Yoo

Before my son was born I was conflicted as to whether I wanted him to look distinctly biracial—a balanced combination of Korean mixed with his mother’s Irish features— or full-blooded Korean like me. The reason I was torn was because we live in a similarly white bred town to the one I grew up in, and my initial instinct was that I didn’t want him to have to deal with all the baggage that comes with looking different in a predominantly white New England neighborhood, because then he’d likely develop a deep ambivalence or self-loathing toward his ethnicity the way I did growing up.

Therefore, I decided that I wanted him to look blatantly mixed-race, figuring it would make life easier for him. I reasoned he’d be able to navigate both the white world and the Asian world with equal ease. Plus, you ever heard of that thing called “white privilege?” Well, my son could claim half of that. Alas, when my son was born, he looked exactly like me: his eyes, his nose and the way his arms looked kind of buff but were utterly devoid of muscle. And I felt premature sadness for all the crap he’d have to endure as the minority Asian-looking kid in a decidedly Anglo-Saxon community in the United States.

That is, until I met John.

Last month, I attended a holiday dinner and I ended up sitting next to John, a half-Korean, half-white guy—just like my son! I suddenly remembered how quietly envious I’d been of the lone biracial guy during my college days—he looked like Brandon Lee of The Crowand all the ladies wanted to jump him. I sat there staring at John during dinner, happily picturing my son, who has gradually started to look more mixed-race as the months pass. But as the night wore on, I watched this guy vacillate between being deeply ambivalent about his Asian side and pretending he wasn’t white. He not-so-casually mentioned to me at least five times that people were always stunned when they found out he was half-Asian, that they mistook him for being Italian since he had an olive complexion. Then a minute later, I watched him chastise the white guy on the other side of the table for having the ignorant gall to suggest that the udon noodles at the Porter Exchange mall were remotely authentic.

“Aren’t udon noodles Japanese?” I asked John.

His eyes flickered.

“Yeah, and the Chinese invented spaghetti before the Italians, which I’m always getting mistaken for, since I’m so tan,” he whispered to me for the sixth time.

On the drive home I explained to my wife how confused I felt: biracial John was actually even more ambivalent about his ethnicity than I’d ever been as a kid, thereby debunking my theory that being blatantly mixed-race would make life so much easier for my son.

“It’s not how you look on the outside that dictates how ambivalent you‘ll become,” my wife asserted. “What determines it, then?” I asked. “It’s how messed up you are on the inside that dictates it, and we have every reason to believe that Griffin will turn out just fine, because my sane genes balance your crazy ones out,” she explained. “You and John should go bowling or something.”

Touché.

By Dave Yoo

My wife’s father, Bob, has a certain way of doing just about everything. In his mind, to divert from his strict protocol is to invite disaster. Take washing the dishes, for instance. He doesn’t trust dishwashers, his theory being that you should wash in the order of the object’s proximity to your mouth when you eat. Which means you have to clean the silverware first, then the glasses, and then the plates and bowls last. According to him, to wash dishes out of this order is to invite all kinds of bacteria. Since I’m just as stubborn as he is, I’m constantly arguing with him about his set ways.

Whenever the whole family visits my in-laws on special occasions, Bob always makes a big bonfire. For years, I’ve begged to help out, but he’s always refused to relinquish control as the official “fire master,” because, of course, he has a certain way to make fires. But last weekend, as he was battling a strep throat, he finally granted me the honor. I was determined to prove to him that not only is there more than one way to do something correctly, but that in some instances, there can be an even better way to do it.

After dinner, I went outside to the bonfire pit and collected branches. Earlier in the day, Bob had already stacked some logs in his patented pentagon formation in order to “maximize air flow.” Since it was so cold, the rest of the family waited back at the house for the fire to get started. I stuffed napkins in between branches, and then secretly doused the pile with lighter fluid, which I knew Bob considered sacrilege. When I deemed the pile adequately drenched, I lit the sucker. The flames shot up more than 12 feet! Back at the house, I could see everyone’s faces pressed against the glass, their mouths agape. I felt incredibly proud of my accomplishment, but it wasn’t enough — I wanted the fire to be even bigger. Then something caught my eye.

“Hello, what’s this?” I asked, stumbling over to a big rubber tire. On the ground next to it were the remains of an old, rotting wagon. “More fire wood!” I shouted to myself.

I lugged the walls of the wagon up to the fire and tossed them on. The flames were now maybe 15, 20 feet tall. Bob gave me a begrudging thumb’s up sign. It’s like I was turning into a man before his very eyes. My wife ran out the back door.

“It’s huge!” she shouted. “You’re a hero!”

“I found this old wagon, it made the flames so big!” I said.

Her face turned white.

“You burned the wagon?”

“It’s a pile of junk. Or was,” I said, admiring the fire.

“That’s my father’s wagon. He attaches it to the tractor and bails hay with it.”

“But it was broken.”

“He repairs it every spring. It used to be Grandpa’s. Fixing it is like his way of mourning his father every year.”

Uh-oh.

“It really wasn’t salvageable,” I stammered. “It would have really depressed him to try to put it back together.”

She just stared at the fire, shaking her head.

The next morning, the cars in the driveway were covered with an inch of strange, gray dust. It looked like nuclear winter. I realized it was ashes from my fire-code-breaking bonfire.

The door opened, and Bob peeked his head in the room.

“Interested in vacuuming the living room?” he asked.

“Sure thing,” I replied, and I didn’t question his directives to start by vacuuming the perimeter and then work my way into the center of the room. As I stupidly followed his precise instructions, I caught his reflection in the mirror as he left.

He was smiling.

—Dave Yoo

I had to set up a new phone number once I moved out of my old apartment, and since then I’ve been deluged with upwards of 20 calls a day from the bane of man’s existence: telemarketers. I was on the Buzz-off List at my old place and had stopped getting bothered by these faceless cold-callers years ago, and apparently I’d taken for granted how nice it is to just be left alone as I work at home as a writer.

There’s a sweet science to dealing with these people. I mean, you can’t just say no, because they end up calling back a day later. And simply ignoring the call only guarantees they’ll keep trying you ad infinitum. Besides, it’s hard to decipher the numbers that show up on my caller ID. Who do I know in Florida? Texas? What if it’s a long lost friend, or someone calling to invite me to do a book reading or something?

The thing is, you can’t berate these people, either. That’s a surefire way to guarantee they’ll call back simply out of spite. Telemarketers, by nature, are incredibly vengeful people.

So you have to get creative.

I’m street smart enough to know not to give out personal information over the phone, lest I want to wake up one morning in a tub with homemade stitches in my side and one of my precious kidneys missing. So I lie when they press me for details, but I always end up fumbling.

“Is this David Yoo?” a telemarketer will ask.

I’ll sigh into the receiver.

“Sorry, this is a business line,” I say, thinking it’s a sufficient conversation-ender.

“Oh, what kind of business is this?”

This always frazzles me, and I end up quoting George Costanza for lack of being able to think of a single other type of company.

“Um, I-I mean, we, we’re in the, uh, importing exporting business,” I say.

A pause on the other end.

“Are you lying?” the voice asks.

I hang up the phone.

My other trick is to claim to be someone else.

“Is this David Yoo?”

“Oh, sorry pal, that was the former tenant. Dude no longer lives here,” I say.

“And who am I speaking with?”

“Um … Jon,” I stammer. “Yeah, this is John … Stamos?”

“Sir, are you actually David Yoo?”

“Don’t call here again,” I snap, slamming the receiver into its cradle.

I even pull a move sometimes that most 8-year-olds would find childish, and pretend that the phone connection is bad.

“I’m sorry,” I practically shout. “If you can hear me just know that I can’t hear you. Phone line … bad. So … frustrating, wish I could hear you!”

“I just need a minute of your time, sir,” the telemarketer says.

“Can’t spare a minute, like I said, um, I can’t hear a word you’re saying,” I reply.

Silence on the other end.

“Sorry,” I say softly, then hang up the phone.

OK, so none of these tactics have ever really worked for me, but the other day I finally did come up with an effective solution. The phone rang, and I answered sounding extremely pleasant, as to suggest that I was totally open to hearing their spiel. Midway through the marketing script, I suddenly kicked the door loud enough for them to hear over the receiver and shouted, “Jesus, who are you? Get out of here! I’m on the phone with the police and, oh Jesus, don’t, stop, no, what are you doing? Please!” and hung up the phone.

The telemarketer didn’t call back.

The thing is, I ended up staring at the phone for 10 minutes, feeling at first sad and then deeply hurt that the person didn’t try me again. I mean, the telemarketer heard me struggling with an intruder and made no effort to check up on me.

What kind of heartless monster would do that sort of thing?

—Dave Yoo

WED's Links: Asian Ams grab Obama’s attention, Jenna Ushkowitz, SK's 1st Chemical Castration Pedophile; Uglydoll Makers http://t.co/w9gRr0sH

Tuesday's Links: North Korea (again), K-Pop, Author Krys Lee, Man charged with slapping loud kid in theater http://t.co/DhC62HjN

The Ten Most Fashionable Asian-Americans In NYC http://t.co/oTE8EJCN

Just a reminder, the SMTOWN live streaming K-pop concert is going on ... right now! http://t.co/JywXQ91F

I uploaded a @YouTube video http://t.co/NnQFpSdq SMTOWN World Tour - EXO, SHINEE, f(x) Performance P.2