and Words
Moo-soo-too-younger-hey-hey
Moo-sala-kooloo-hoh
Moo-soo-too-younger-hey-hey
Moo-sala-kooloo-hoh
They say it’s gonna rain
Blue sky is gonna break
Can you tell why me why
Do good things always have to end?
It seems like yesterday
But it only just begun
Laughing in the sun
I’d hoped you’d be my life long friend
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
As I turned ten, I moved from Puerto Rico to Fort Lauderdale and subsequently spent much of my time expunging the Chinese and Spanish culture from my mind. No, I’m exaggerating. I spent no energy intentionally forgetting my culture but certainly did little to retain it. By the mid 1980’s, I graduated high school. I made a few great friends with whom I still keep in touch, but truthfully, I fumbled my way through it. There were no other Cantonese students in my high school, and very few that spoke Spanish. By the end, I functioned mostly as a native, though average, English speaker with aptitude for mathematics and computers. I proceeded to study engineering at the University of Miami.
Those months between high school and college were transformational. For years I took for granted the significance of congregating with people like me. I sleepwalked through high school, establishing friendships, but not quite finding my people. In some surreal way, I felt very alone, fully believing there was no one else like me. Then abruptly, in one night at one party, it all magically appeared. I found people who looked like me and lived the same experiences. During that summer, I finally found kinship with other Chinese-Americans. It felt just short of having a fairy godmother.