Story #17 - Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite

We were on a budget on our road trip up the coast to Portland, so I booked us at the cheapest motels on the way. I told my boyfriend that we shouldn’t sleep on top of the covers because I had watched a TV special that said motels never wash them. He lifted the comforter and found washed-out bloodstains on his and my side of the bed. The motel ran out of clean bed sheets and we argued about which was worse to sleep on. He slept on the covers and I slept under, wrapped head to toe with clothing.

Story #16 - Stuck in LA

I thought I heard her talking to me, but when I asked her, she told me she was just talking to her baby.

Two seconds later, she said, “Don’t have a baby before you get married.”

I felt compelled to sit next to her at the coffee shop and played with her eight-month-old while she talked about how she was lonely. She had moved out to LA from Jersey a month ago to be with her baby’s father, but wanted to move back because he was cheating on her constantly. She was slowly planning her escape route back to Jersey.

Story #15 - Remembering Your Roots

My parents both grew up in the same city in Cambodia, but they didn’t meet each other until my mom was 19 and my dad was 29. The first time he set eyes on her, he didn’t stop pursuing her. He’d show up at the movie theater that she and her friends were at and sit next to her. He’d come by on his motorcycle to her up from work. They got married soon after, survived a war, became refugees, had four kids, and moved to the U.S. to Wisconsin and California, where they have been married for 40 years.

Story #14 - Ode to Lucky

My dad caught her in our backyard while she was snacking on some red chili peppers. She put up a fight. She was gorgeous with the softest golden feathers and blushed bright red circles on her cheeks. We’d let her out of her cage and she’d walk around the house, learning the layout of our house. She’d look for my mom and preen her hair whenever she was napping on the couch.  She’d chirp loudly whenever she heard our cars drive by – memorizing the sound of our engines. She’d bow her head down for us to massage her neck feathers.

Story #13 - A Helping Hand

When I took a trip out to Nikko – a Japanese city famous for its hot springs – I didn’t know what to expect since I had never been to one before. In the women’s quarter, the ladies sat naked on stools, vigorously scrubbing themselves with soap and towels before going in for a dip. I felt self-conscious about my naked body and apparently didn’t scrub myself well enough because the women hurriedly talked to me in Japanese and decided to help me out by hosing me down. I thanked them awkwardly and proceeded to sit in the hot spring in silence.

Story #12 - On the Road

It was one of those nights where we looked at each other and said, “You only live once,” and then drove out at midnight for two hours to the desert. We drank and danced and knew we had a long drive ahead in the morning, but it was so beautiful outside that there wasn’t any room for being tired. Being out in the open road, driving through the sandpaper desert, and heading towards snow-capped mountains made us elated. Temper Trap was blaring on our car stereo while we were engulfed by the sea of giant windmills, all rotating in unison.

Story #11 - On Regretting Decisions

I knew it’d be a good Saturday whenever my brother and I would theater hop to watch two movies – three if we were lucky – for three bucks. We’d cut out the movie schedules from the Los Angeles Times’ Calendar section and then wait in the restrooms or at the concession stands between showings so we wouldn’t get caught. One day, we decided on “Waterworld” and “Species.” Little did we know that “Species” was practically a pornographic sci-fi about an alien temptress having sex with everyone, and we sat through the movie awkwardly and regretful, as a brother and sister would.

Story #10 - The King of the Backyard

He was so cute when my brother first got him at the flea market. But eventually, the chick became a gigantic rooster that terrorized our suburban backyard. My brother didn’t build him a coop like he was supposed to, but rather bought a new 13-gallon trash can with a lid for the rooster to sleep in at night and to protect him so the neighborhood cats wouldn’t attack him. Every morning, the rooster would jump straight up from the trashcan, pushing the lid off, and then would jump on our hammock and swing and crow and peck at our feet.

Story #9 - Shanghai at Night

Every night when our parents would fall asleep, we’d tip-toe out of our hotel rooms and meet up in the lobby for a drink. We were in our mid-twenties and were touring through China with a large group of strangers. We bonded quickly over gin and tonics. On our last night in Shanghai, we walked to the nearest shopping mall and followed the sound of dance music, finding ourselves at a bar full of Brazilians. They were soccer players and dancers who were living in China and welcomed us into their circle - dancing, laughing, and drinking with us all night.

Story #8 - My Chinese Movie Theater

When we were kids, my siblings and I would go to this Chinese movie theater close by. We’d watch kung fu movies and even dramas (that we pretended to like so we’d look cool). Nobody that worked there cared if you were ten and watching R-rated movies. There would be a hodgepodge of plastic and metal foldout chairs laid out in scribbled rows. The concession stand was a cheap plastic table, and one scrawny teenager - who was most likely the owner’s son - would sell cheese-flavored shrimp chips and soymilk. We knew we’d never find another place like it.

Story #7 - One Tough Cookie

“Look up ‘Kate Webb’,” he said about his former colleague who had once given him some sound career advice.

Kate, a reporter from New Zealand with a love for smoking and drinking, had travelled to Cambodia to take over as the UPI’s bureau chief there. She was captured by the North Vietnamese troops in 1971 and “disappeared” for 23 days as she was held in captivity with five others. Many presumed she was dead and an obituary was placed in the New York Times. Kate had endured marches, interrogations, and malaria, but was otherwise treated humanely by the Viet Cong.

Story #6 - Sunrise/Sunset riding

I felt like I was in the movie “Stand By Me” because we were a group of friends on an adventure on bikes - riding around a Malaysian island. We’d ride the mopeds all day and always wore our bathing suits underneath our clothes. We’d pull over on a patch of grass and drop our mopeds to go swimming in the warm ocean water whenever we felt like it – day or night. We’d eat stingray at the night market. We’d stop by little bars and stand outside in the rain with locals watching the World Cup games on tiny TVs.

Story #5 - Mars Attacks

When she got home, she saw her mom sitting on the couch, just getting off of the phone.

Her mom told her nervously in Chinese that aliens were attacking.

“Are you sure you weren’t just watching a movie on TV?” she asked her mom.

Her mom insisted that it was real and that she and her friend both called each other to confirm it was on the news.

She later discovered that they had been watching “Independence Day”, and by not understanding English, they had their own Orson Welles experience.

When she told her mom, she said, “I knew that...”

Story #4 - Music for the Soul

“When I was in the service, I would hang out with musicians all the time,” he reminisced.

He played the saxophone for the U.S. Marine Band and the trombone player told him they should start a ska band together.

“I had never heard of ska before and my friend gave me The Specials CD and said it would change my life. I remember thinking, ‘I really like this!’

“I’ve been playing the sax again and love neo-soul. If Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings ever asked me to play with them, I’d leave everything to go on the road with them.”