Breadcrumbs Joseph Hong
I don’t recall when the switch happened. Which is weird, since I
should have jotted it down somewhere, right? Maybe it’s the whole
chicken-and-egg thing; I can’t write until I write but I can’t write until I ... wait, something isn’t right. Right? Or is it left? Something I left but
never remembered to pick up till now? Something left, out of left field? I
suppose it was rather sudden, something that went from input to output, reading to writing, a function somewhere in between that jumbled up the
words I’d seen and spat them out in a way that made sense. Sometimes. But it’s always been something that I’d done since I was little because back when all the kids at school had their Nintendo DSes,
GameBoys, and iPod Touches, I had books. Books, because being
broke brings budgeting. Buying things that are essential. And essential apparently meant three entire bookcases filled with books. See, my
kindergartener mind never connected the dots between Asian parenting–– that is, developing the “ultimate mind” meant to calculate math problems at lightning speeds while somehow also being adept in reading, writing, music, sports, and just about anything and everything you could think
of ––and budgeting. I’d say it was because I was so sure we were broke. And being broke brings budgeting, and brings trips to
Barnes & Noble. It’s been years since I’ve seen one, decades since I’ve visited. But when I was in first grade, which by then I had gone through
every one of those books on the shelves at home, there were two places that my mom would take me every week without fail: piano practice and
Barnes & Noble. “The library for rich people,” she would call it. The latest and greatest books, all with that brand new book smell. My kicking and
screaming when going to piano practice and my kicking and screaming
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