Growing Up A Mok: Planes, Trains, and David Blaines

With the baby set to embark on his first airplane ride soon, this is probably as prime a time as any to begin praying that he is nothing like me when it comes to being a passenger on enormous vehicles.

Nowadays, I'm rather harmless.

If I'm a passenger on an airplane, I tend to go for the window seat so I can doze off with my headphones on and without my neighbors being forced to step over me or nudge me or test the capacities of their bladders.

If I'm a passenger on a subway, I can begrudgingly resist the urge to do pullups and an Olympic gymnast rings routine for the sake of those around me.  However, it is essential that I attempt to stand without holding onto anything, and I will at some point stumble into someone else.  Don't ask me to explain it -- I just have to.

If I'm a passenger on a car, don't put me in the front seat because I will inevitably fall asleep.  It doesn't matter if you designate me as the "navigator" -- it's only a matter of time.

But alas, this wasn't always the case.  There was a time when I was a terror to deal with on public transportation.  On one of my first flights to Hong Kong, I was restless.  I don't know what they put in the food, but I could not be contained.  If you really think about it, an airplane aisle is an ideal place for a peaceful protest, and during one of the meals or drinks services, I clamped down and protested whatever it was I was protesting like my life depended on it.

I was lying face flat on the floor in the middle of the aisle with every arm, leg, or tentacle hooked around a chair leg.  I was immovable, like Thor's hammer. The stewardesses walked by and weren't sure what to do, so they asked my mom to move me, but she was also helpless against my sheer force of will.  Not even my mother's tears could loosen my death grip.  I can't remember how the standoff ended, though I'm pretty sure they didn't turn the hose on me or anything like that.  I wish I could recall what exactly it was I was protesting so fiercely against.  Whatever it was, you can't teach heart.

This sprawled-out, surface-area-maximizing technique was a recurring theme on the subway.  Our family took a detour from our stay in Hong Kong to somewhere in China, and I was not pleased about it.  Hey, at least I knew what I was protesting this time.  So I spread eagle on a Chinese subway car and somehow lived to tell the tale.  I got to my feet once the intercom blared out our destination in three different languages and discovered that my clothes were no longer in three different colors.  I was covered in dirt and grime and filth and other nasty things that I don't want to think about right now.  Admittedly, this protest was not very well thought-out.

But the older I get, the more I reminisce fondly on our family road trips.  Our parents ensured we traveled essentially every school break we got, so there were countless hours stuffed in the back of a car hitting mile marker after mile marker.  We were playing Mario Kart on N64 while cruising at 75 mph well before cars were built with TV screens and electric outlets.  I would be landing aerial attacks on my siblings with green shells, red shells, and banana peels, popping all of their balloons in battle mode until fatigue set in and I had to catch some shut-eye.

Long road trips are actually the perfect trap to keep the family all together, for better or for worse.  On the downside, I love sleep, so I would be snoozing as much as possible, but my parents and I would reenact the same argument every time we stopped at a gas station.  The rest of my family, equipped with significantly smaller bladders, would empty out of the automobile en route to those nasty non-Buc-ee's bathrooms, but I would continue snoring.  My mom and dad would start getting upset for some reason, saying that I should go even if I didn't need to go.  I think they resorted to rolling up the windows and turning off the car to smoke me out once, but my slumber knows no bounds.

On the upside, though, if you can ignore the people constantly endeavoring to usher you to the restroom, those car rides produced countless memories.  You're stuck in a car together, so you don't really have a choice but to enjoy each other's company.  There was the N64, sure, but there were also the songs, the games, the laughter, and the high fives whenever we got a trucker to honk his horn.

A top three road trip flashback for me would have to be the magic tricks.  A deck of cards is a staple on every vacation, and there are only so many times you can play War before you find something better to do.  Scratch that, War never gets old; we probably resorted to magic tricks because it was more of a 3-person activity.  Anyway, after we got through our elementary renditions of the "is this your card" tricks, I decided to get my David Blaine on.

I opened with a humble proposal: "Let's try to see if we can guess cards."

I held a card up to my forehead, thought for a couple seconds, then surmised, "Eight?"

My sister and brother were delighted. "Yeah!"

I pinned another card to my noggin, furrowed my brow in concentration, and theorized, "This feels like a... six?"

"Oh my gosh!"

After a few more runs with this, they glanced around, suspicious that my mom was feeding me the answers from the front of the car, but she wasn't paying attention.  Then I got cocky.

"Jack of diamonds."

"Three of hearts."

"Five of spades."

I must have went through half the deck, with these youngsters getting more and more riled up with every card.

Finally, the gig was up.  Not because they figured out that I was reading the cards off of the rearview mirror or the reflection on the window behind them, but because it got too dark outside for me to distinguish the cards.  I ended up just laughing and telling them the truth so they wouldn't think I was possessed and perform an exorcism on me during hibernation.

Moral of the story: if you have kids, buckle them in to their airplane seats with padlocks and throw away the keys. And don't drag them to China; China is the worst. Instead, force them to go on country-wide road trips with you, but if they claim they don't have to pee, then they don't have to pee. 

The "Why" Behind Adoption

When I tell people about my son's adoption story, they are always shocked about how sudden everything happened.  And as I reflect back on the past eight months, I grasp just how wild it must really look to everyone else.

We attended the AIM Adoptions orientation on March 24.  We walked in for our couples interview on April 19.  We went to the group home study on April 21.  I had my interview on May 16.  Ophelia had her interview on May 27.  We hosted our home study on June 17.  Our son was born on July 5.  We got the phone call on July 6.  We met our son on July 7.

From start to finish, the process took 15 weeks.  105 days.  Most expectant couples are pregnant for 9 months.  We were "paper pregnant" for 19 days between being approved at our home study and picking up the phone call that left our jaws on the floor.

Those 19 days were an interesting time.  The wife and I had naively planned a bunch of mini weekend vacations scheduled after our home study thinking that we could take advantage of our last few months of DINK (Double Income No Kids) before becoming DIOK or SIOK.  Of course, things didn't quite go as expected, and the only trip we were able to take was a July 4 weekend in Dallas.

I remember discussing the adoption process with some of my closest family and friends, and there were always two main questions that popped up from their end.

1. How do you feel about becoming a dad... at any moment?

This one was easy -- I felt terrific.  Wonderful.  Amazing.  I don't know if it's just my personality to not worry or stress about much, but I'd like to think that in this case it was a combination of both my personality and my faith.  Honestly, there was just this overwhelming sense of peace about the whole situation.  In a poetic sense, having everything out of my control was the best reminder to me that I was never in control in the first place.  God was and is and will always be my compass, and I knew there was no reason to fret about the adoption because it wasn't a matter of "if" he would provide us with a child, it was a "when."  I have no doubt that He had Levi in mind for us well before the thought of adoption ever entered our consciousness.

2. Why are y'all adopting?

This question was much more loaded.

The Cliffs Notes version?  We felt like God was leading us to adopt this year.

The slightly longer version?  For me, the idea of adoption first started gnawing away at me in Kenya in 2006.  I was there on a church missions trip with my siblings and some other friends, and we met hundreds and hundreds of kids.  We visited several orphanages, and our time spent playing with those children is something that I will never forget.  It was so gut-wrenching to think about all the kids in the world who, for one reason or another, have to grow up without parents.  Someday, I thought to myself, someday I might be able to adopt.

I remember Ophelia and I talked about adoption at least a couple of times while we were dating.  The funny thing is, we talked about adopting more than we ever talked about getting married... which was just once.  (I was incredulous that men don't get engagement rings, and I was secretly trying to figure out her ring size.  Which I got wrong anyway, but that's another story.)  We both had a heart for adoption, and that's when I realized we would adopt at some point in the future... you know, assuming we got married and all.

Fast forward to 2015, four years of dating, one year of engagement, and four years of marriage, we began earnestly praying about the timing of a potential adoption.  Then Fort Bend Community Church launched an adoption sermon series, where we got to not only hear testimonies from people in our church community who adopted but more importantly hear the pastors drive home the parallel of our adoption into God's family.  Things took off from there, and we listened to the adoption sermon series from Austin Stone as well, and eventually, it hit us.  This was it.  Let's do this thing.

Now today is National Adoption Day 2016, and I'm finishing up this post with a beautiful 4.5-month-old baby boy on my lap, with both of us cackling at the sweater vest hoodie that covers his eyes.  Looking back over the 10-year journey that God has brought me on to this point, I can't help but wonder in awe at what the next leg of the adventure will look like.

Growing Up A Mok: Chinese School

Ever since we adopted Levi, one of the most common questions we get is: "Are y'all gonna teach him Chinese?"

The short answer?  We don't know.  His grandparents will definitely try their best, but it's tough for me to consider Chinese school when I went through more than a decade of classes with essentially nothing to show for it.

No offense to any of my teachers -- they are wonderful people -- but teaching kids Cantonese when they rarely, if ever, speak it at home is such a waste of time.  I memorized a lot of vocabulary words during those years, but the dialect is like 90% slang, so the majority of those words were useless in the real world.

I'll always remember Chinese school for what it truly was: a hindrance to my love of basketball.

When I first started Chinese school back in the 90s, it was the heyday of the best Sunday afternoon TV lineup ever: NBA on NBC.  Like 98% of Asian kids back then, I did not have access to cable television, so those Sabbath tripleheaders were my only real glimpse into the rest of the NBA world outside of my beloved Houston Rockets.  I still dream about that intro music sometimes.

We'd be plugging away in class waiting for our next break, and when the teacher finally relented, we would all crowd around the beat-up television set in the corner and try to catch a scratchy, pixelated glimpse of a Michael Jordan highlight.  Someone would have antenna duty, which consisted of twisting and curving that precious piece of metal until a semi-clear image would appear on the screen.

Kids today got it so easy with their smartphones and tablets and Wi-Fi.  Back in our day, we had to work that antenna like a Stretch Armstrong to get a decent picture.

I couldn't get enough of basketball back then.  It was always on my mind, and the obsession manifested itself with basketball cards.  Every week after worship service, it would be a trading frenzy that even the folks at the World Trade Center would be proud of.  And since Chinese school was also at church a couple hours later, much of class turned into a prolonged negotiation.  I did everything I could to collect cards of my two favorite basketball players: Sam Cassell and Penny Hardaway.  This is especially fitting now because my entire collection is currently worth pennies as well.

The strangest thing about Chinese school was that my parents still somehow got me to keep going.  We're not merely talking about a couple of my formative years, we're talking tail end of middle school territory, and I'm sitting in a small church classroom on a Sunday afternoon... still waiting for that cherished mandatory break.

There was a bell involved, but not the fancy kind at normal schools that dings over the intercom system.  No, the Chinese school bell was literally a bell that some volunteer lady would have to parade around the church ringing that signified when everyone could escape from their classrooms for a few minutes.  You just hoped you would be at the beginning of her bell route instead of near the end because everyone was headed for the same place: the basketball court.

Ball is life.  It didn't matter that the break was only supposed to be maybe ten minutes long.  We'd always try to get a game in.  Then the bell lady would inevitably start her march again, and we'd all groan, hang our heads, and head back to class wondering what we were doing with our lives.

By the time we reached high school, my class was the oldest grade for Chinese school.  Nobody really wanted to be our teacher anymore, as I think we had developed a bit of a bad reputation.  Frankly, most people were wondering why we were still there.  Myself included.

Chinese school hit rock bottom when our class consisted of maybe five people, and we had straight up lost all motivation to take it seriously.  We wouldn't stop talking and/or playing paper football, so the teacher punished us the only way he could think of.  He started by putting my friend Evan in a corner for timeout.  Evan was confused at first, but he got to his feet, stepped to a corner of the room, and goofily stood there, looking back at the table where the other four of us remained sitting while the teacher tried to continue the lesson.

But we kept chitchatting, so the teacher sent me to another corner.  And on and on until I swear four of us high schoolers were standing in a different corner of the room, with only one student left at the table with any chance of learning Chinese.  The room wasn't even that big, maybe 10 x 15, so we were all within arm's length of the table.  We were clueless about what to do, so at one point we started doing the wave.  It was bizarre and hilarious -- to this day, I can't think of that story and not chuckle.

So back to the original question: are we going to teach our son Chinese?  Yes, but probably not through Chinese school.  And for sure only the most important words like "bathroom," "are you kidding me," "too expensive," and "beef flat noodle."

Growing Up A Mok: CiCi's

Whenever I'm with a group of people who can't decide where to go for their next meal, I typically suggest CiCi's.  But the idea is almost always immediately vetoed, and I'm left wondering why with tears streaming down my face

For those living under a rock, CiCi's is an all-you-can-eat pizza joint that has somehow developed a bad rep.  They serve other stuff too, like salads and soups and pastas, but only weird people put that stuff on their plates.  Going to CiCi's and eating something other than pizza is like... going to a pizza joint and eating something other than pizza.  There's absolutely no justification.

But I'm biased towards CiCi's, of course.  I grew up on that glorious buffet line.  You can ask my sister or brother -- if we heard we were going out to eat, we would get hyped... until we'd ask my dad where we were headed, and his response would predictably be the same.

"Chinese restaurant."

We'd wail and we'd whine, but an hour later, we'd be spinning a lazy Susan at one of three restaurants our family would cycle through.  It got to a point where my brother hated Chinese food.  Actually, maybe he still does, and that's why he lives in Chicago now.

Then my parents discovered CiCi's.  And everything changed.

I'm still not sure how it happened.  I'm guessing they caught a fateful CiCi's TV commercial that detailed the kids' special price of $1.99, and their eyes naturally lit up like a Christmas tree.

That tiny human price was supposed to cover children ages 10 and younger, so my parents snuck us all in there with a slouch until we were at least 12, possibly even 13.  I specifically remember the cashier giving me some side-eye one of the final times my parents risked getting blacklisted from the greatest pizza place in the world, but what were his options?  Was he gonna card me?  Ask my parents for a birth certificate?

Another time I was so anxious to burst into the restaurant that I exited the car a couple seconds prior to my dad pulling into the parking spot.  But my dad was also so anxious to burst into the restaurant that he didn't register my calls of distress after he had parked the car on my foot.  He was halfway to the entrance before he finally understood my screams.

Aside from the bargain basement cost of entry, let's talk about the pizza for a second.  They offer a plethora of options sitting out ready for consumption; from the classics (cheese, pepperoni, sausage) to the specialties (taco, barbecue, chocolate), there's a flavor for every type of palate.

You know that feeling when you pay for one package of Reese's peanut butter cups from a vending machine but two drop down?  This part is kinda like that.  Not only is CiCi's already scrumptious with the endless supply of pizza, but they will build and cook you ANY PIZZA YOUR HEART DESIRES.

I thought there was a catch at first.  But next thing I knew, my mom had ordered a spinach and pineapple pizza, and our lives were never the same.

You can hate on CiCi's all you want, but one thing is undeniable: nobody makes a better spinach pizza.  It may sound bizarre, but add pineapples to it, and your taste buds will do a happy dance.  As I've grown older, I've added Italian sausage to the mix, so now every food group is covered.

But some things don't change, like my habit of piling up the uneaten pizza crusts like carb-loaded trophies in order to keep count of how many slices I've scarfed down.  Every visit to this legendary restaurant has a built-in eating contest added to the experience.

And perhaps now you understand why it's 2016 and my siblings and I are still celebrating birthdays and anniversaries and other momentous occasions at CiCi's.  And perhaps still sneaking Sprite into the water cups.

Growing Up A Mok: BELUGA

I had an epiphany the other day.  I realized that I've been a sports fanatic for over 20 years, and those west coast games are still too late.  They tip off somewhere in the vicinity of 9:30 PM and just seem to last forever.  That's two decades of staying up way past my bedtime to support my team to victory.  Story of my life, you could say.

When I was a wee lad, I had this handheld radio that I would turn way down and put underneath my pillow.  My parents would come upstairs to make sure my siblings and I were all tucked in and asleep, and I would have my eyes closed but my ears tuned in to the basketball game.  I always knew the next day would be miserable with so little shut-eye, but I was committed -- I couldn't take a play off.

Sometimes I'd be bolder and wait until my parents went to sleep to try to sneak downstairs to the living room to turn on the TV.  I'd tiptoe down the stairs, careful to avoid the ones that creaked.  It was super suspenseful since my dad heard absolutely every sound back then.

I would reach the TV and angle it away from the direction of my parents' bedroom to minimize the light.  It was pitch black in the room, but I had that remote control memorized better than my phone number.  I'd hit the power button, followed immediately by the mute button.  Then I'd take a quick five second delay to look for any movement from the parents.  After that, the coast was clear, so I'd let a tiny smile escape and watch the Seattle SuperSonics crush the Houston Rockets and all my hopes and dreams.

I managed a 75% success rate.  On the times that I failed, I'd be focused on watching Detlef Schrempf sink another bucket, and then my heart would skip a startled beat as my dad would suddenly be four feet behind me saying one single word: "JONATHAN."

That's all it took.  One word, and I'd turn off the TV, mutter good night, slink back upstairs, crawl into bed... and turn the radio back on.  I mean, what else could I do at that point?

As luck would have it, my family moved to another house a few years later.  It was just like the previous one, with all three of the kids' bedrooms upstairs, but with one essential addition: an upstairs game room.  And we got a TV in there.

Oh, boy.  What a time to be alive.  But I started getting cocky and wouldn't leave the games on mute.  I wanted to hear the crowd ooh and ahh after a beautiful Dream Shake.  I wanted to feel the crowd silenced after a dagger jumper.  I wanted to get the full experience... especially since I was sacrificing some much-needed sleep for it.

My success rate at getting away with it increased slightly.  Either I was way too immersed in the basketball game or my dad was way too much of a ninja, but he'd still make me jump with his patented "JONATHAN."

Then it clicked.  Why did God bless me with younger siblings if not to be lookouts?  So we talked it over and came up with a code word: "BELUGA."  For the life of me, I can't recall how we came up with this word other than it sounding funny, but it sure worked.

My brother's room was the closest to the stairs, and when he'd hear footsteps, he'd let out a quick "BELUGA," which gave me plenty of time to turn off the TV and slide back into bed.  Little did we know at the time, but this system of ours would also reap large dividends when it came to fruit.

You see, my mom never thought we ate enough fruit.  It was probably true, but she would overcompensate by preparing three servings for each of us at a time.  I swear her life calling is to prevent any of us from contracting scurvy.

By now, you probably know how my dad always lied about the "Is this new" question, but with my mom, her pants-on-fire Achilles heel was the "Is this one fruit" question.  She'd always try to convince me that yes, this overflowing bowl stacked with oranges did indeed come from one single orange.  I'd try to test the theory by putting the orange pieces back together like Legos, but not once did it ever fit.

Some teenagers rebel by smoking or drinking.  Me?  I did the more sensible thing.  I rebelled by throwing orange slices off my brother's balcony into the empty lot adjacent to our house.  Yes, it was wasteful, but man, I really didn't feel like eating three oranges in one sitting every night.

Thanks in large part to the "BELUGA" call, the balcony had a 100% success rate, and chunking all that fruit built up my arm strength, so win-win.  A couple years ago, I came clean to my mother about the gravity-defying produce, and she was appalled, but (I think) she was eventually able to laugh it off.

Oh, but my parents don't know about the "BELUGA" thing yet, so if y'all could do me a solid and keep that on the down-low, my siblings and I would truly appreciate it.  Never know when it might come in handy again.  And now there's a lake behind their house, so the balcony Hail Marys will end up feeding whatever river monster lies beneath the surface.  Ugh, water sucks.

Growing Up A Mok: "Is this new?"

My dad is one of those people who grew up poor and is now not poor, but old habits die hard.  That statement may not have anything to do with the rest of this story, but it might, so I figured I'd lead with that to cover all my bases.

Growing up, my dad would always have some form of sustenance ready for his three kids in the morning.  He is a rad dad.  Half the time it would be something delicious, like pigs in a blanket or croissants.  The other half the time it would be some horrendous combination, like toast with both butter and peanut butter.  They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but butter and peanut butter is a punishment nobody deserves.

One thing was always consistent, though -- a giant cup of milk.  Now from this point onward, I know I'm going to risk sounding more and more like a spoiled brat, but in reality, I love milk.  Me and milk are tight.  Milk is responsible for cheese and ice cream, two of my favorite things (not together), so you know I have no problem with milk.

I just can't drink "old" milk.

No, I'm not talking about expired sour milk, although I definitely can't drink that, either.  I'm talking about milk that has been poured out and sitting for longer than ten minutes.

I don't know how to explain it.  The first 9.99 minutes after it leaves the jug?  Cold, fresh, and anything 1% fat and over?  Money.

Once that timer hits ten minutes, though?  The taste of the milk completely transforms.  Like I said, I don't know how to explain it -- it's just science.

But my dad would never believe me.  I've had a lifelong struggle with alarm clocks, so I wasn't always the most punctual person to the breakfast table.  I take sole responsibility for that, but nobody should have to drink old milk.

After the first couple times, I told my dad to not pour me milk.  If anything, I could pour it myself, right?  In theory, yes, but every time I came downstairs, there it was.  A glass of milk waiting for me.  He just couldn't help himself.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm grateful.  More so now than back then, probably.  But I started asking my dad what became a recurring question in the house: "Is this new?"

My dad's automatic response: "Sun, gah!"

For my non-Cantonese brethren, that's a yes.  Specifically, the direct translation would be "new," followed by one of the thousands of interjections Cantonese people tack on to the end of every sentence.

So I took a big gulp.  I don't know what was worse, the poison going down my throat or the knife in my back.

Maybe it was just bad milk, I thought.  Gotta give my father the benefit of the doubt, right?  It's all good, just a one-time strange mishap.

I reminded my dad that I would get my own milk, but the following day, there it was again, a full cup sitting on the counter.

I inquired with a raised brow: "Is this new?"

"Sun, gah!"

So I took a smaller sip this time, a little more skeptical than the day before.  And my suspicions were justified -- this was definitely old milk.

We reached an impasse.  My dad couldn't not pour me milk, and I couldn't drink old milk.  So I did the only thing I could think of.  I would wait until he left the kitchen, then I'd pour it down the drain.

Everyone judging me for wasting milk right now, please stop.  It wasn't just me.  My siblings followed suit.  That doesn't change much of anything, but at least it should spread the judging around.  If I'm going down, I'm taking y'all down with me.

My dad caught one of us in the act, and he wasn't all that giddy about it.  What followed was an unpleasant discussion, but I thought that was the end of him pouring milk for us.  But he just adapted.

The next time, there it was, taunting me.  Another cup, brimming with milk.

"Is this new?"

"Sun, gah!"

So I grabbed the handle on the mug, and it sent my Spidey sense tingling.  The handle was cold.  Cue the dramatic music.

My dad had poured the cup of milk, placed it in the fridge, waited until I was almost downstairs, pulled it out of the fridge, placed it on the table, and told me that he had just poured it.

I trust my dad with everything in life.  Except for an honest answer to the "Is this new?" question.

But it's easy to flip the script and see things from my dad's lenses.  He just wanted to make sure the three of us had our fill of vitamin D.  His motives were pure.  His inability to tell the truth was limited to milk.

Or so we thought.

Fast forward a few years, and my brother Jason was home from college for the weekend.  Only problem?  He forgot his toothbrush and asked our dad for one.

My dad disappeared into his room, reemerging a few seconds later with a toothbrush.  No plastic wrap.  No container.  No nothing.

"Is this new?"

"Sun, gah!"

Jason went in for a closer inspection.  The stick was slightly worn.  The bristles were pointed in different directions.  This toothbrush was definitely used -- on someone else's teeth, on the bathtub, on the toilet seat -- your guess is as good as mine.  My brother looked up, prepared to protest, and my dad just had the goofiest grin on his face.

The best part?  Jason ran into my dad's bathroom to investigate, and my old man had a handful of brand new toothbrushes still in their boxes just waiting to be opened.  That nasty toothbrush from who knows where that my father had tried to pawn off onto my brother wasn't even close to being the only extra toothbrush he had.

Needless to say, nobody asks my dad "Is this new?" anymore.

Growing Up A Mok: Mini Identity Crisis

I've always been tempted to write a book.  My interest piqued at the height of popularity of David Sedaris books.  I read one and thought to myself, I could write stuff like this and somebody would pay me?  But the motivation proved fleeting, and now when I think of writing a book, it just sounds like a whole lot of work for very little payoff.

All that is to say that this is the start of (hopefully) a series of posts about random childhood stories.  Man, my writing is rusty.  Well, I suppose I gotta start again somewhere, so if it's anything like riding a bike, I'll be pedaling headfirst into a mailbox soon.

But that's a story for another time.  Today let's just start simply with an introduction to my name.

My parents almost named me Godwin.  It was a tossup between that or Jonathan, and I don't know what turned the tide, but I'm glad it did.  At this point, though, I've been called so many different names in my life that I go through a mini identity crisis every time I am forced to introduce myself.

Life began easily enough.  Everyone called me Jonathan except for the family friends who knew my Chinese nickname, Kay-Kay.

And then I got to 6th grade and joined the orchestra.  And, wouldn't you know it, there was another Jonathan Mok in there.

It turned out we lived in the same neighborhood.  And we both had sisters named Jennifer.  And we both had mothers who were realtors.  And we both were cool enough to pick up a stringed instrument.

So what happens when two people have the same name in a class?  Contrary to popular belief based loosely off the movie Highlander, we didn't have a cage match fight to the death, with the sole survivor being awarded the honorable name.  He was older and in 8th grade, so he became Big Jon Mok, and I was henceforth known as Lil Jon Mok.

The nickname caught on quick, and it even became one of my first AIM screennames.  But somewhere along the way, I forgot the password.  I don't have any regrets in life, but if I did, losing that password would be way, way up there at the top of the pile.

My family moved that summer, and the other guy didn't move with us, so at my new school, "Lil Jon Mok" was soon shortened to just "Mok."

Names have been on my mind quite a bit recently.  The wife and I had about 12 hours to finalize a name for our son after we got a phone call informing us of his birth, so it's a good thing we had juggled a couple potential boy and girl names beforehand.  The conversation started off something like this:

Me: I don't want a name that's too long.
Wife: What's too long?
Me: Anything more than two syllables.
Wife: But your name's Jonathan...

I don't have anything against my name.  My parents would repeatedly tell me that it meant "gift from God," which is coincidentally something that I also repeatedly remind the wife of.  I like the name, but for a variety of reasons, it just has no staying power.

I think it boils down to two primary aspects:
1. The name is too long
2. The name has one relatively strong syllable and two laughably weak syllables

With the first bullet point, I haven't done the necessary research, but according to my 30-second mental list, 86% of names over two syllables are cast aside for shorter nicknames.  The proof is in the pudding -- think of all the Jonathan's you know.  Do any of them actually go by Jonathan?

Regarding the second bullet point, imagine a crowded, noisy area.  Your local pub, perhaps.  I can't even begin to count how many times this exact situation has taken place after making some small talk with a stranger:

Stranger: HEY I'M ___, WHAT'S YOUR NAME?
Me: I'M JONATHAN.
Stranger: WHAT WAS THAT?
Me: JONATHAN.
Stranger: JOHN?
Me: JONATHAN.
Stranger: JOHNNY?
Me: OKAY.

Thankfully, not all of my interactions require yelling, and in my professional life, it's rather straightforward.  "Hello, my name is Jonathan.  Nice to meet you."

However, in a more informal setting, I run through a quick mental algorithm to figure out if I should call myself Jonathan or Mok.  Am I going to come across this person again?  If so, how many times?  Are we going to get past the acquaintance stage?

Sometimes I decide on "Jonathan" and am in mid-handshake when a mutual friend will pop his/her head in and be like, LOL WHAT WHO'S JONATHAN?  Thus begins a much longer explanation than necessary culminating in a "Mok, Jonathan Mok" catastrophe in my worst James Bond impersonation.

So there's the answer, right?  In mega-decibel arenas, I refrain from using my first name, and it has worked.  I have completely avoided being called "John"!  Instead, this exchange occurs:

Stranger: HEY I'M ___, WHAT'S YOUR NAME?
Me: I'M MOK.
Stranger: WHAT WAS THAT?
Me: MOK.
Stranger: MARK?
Me: MOK.
Stranger: MARK?
Me: OKAY.

Problem solved.