If the title of this post hasn’t made you close this tab and turn to something else to curb 5 minutes of boredom, you are truly special. Possibly not in a good way. I don’t know because I don’t know who you are. I just know you’re out there.
I also know I’ve been away from writing for so long I got locked out of my WordPress account.
Each time I think, “Meh, I’m done. I’m out of stories and who the fuck cares, writing kinda sucks anyway.”
But today I met someone who said my last post reminded him of my favorite Bill Lawrence show and now fuck. I guess I’m back trying to prove to myself I haven’t lost it.
The past few years I’ve worked more and more in voiceover. It’s a field of acting I never pursued because, like everyone else, I associate success with having my face show up on whatever screen people are looking at as many times as possible.
But the more I work in voiceover, the more I realize, “Shit. This is the life partner I never knew I needed.”
Last week, I recorded a commercial in my closet. The client and director were based in New York, and my session was at 8am PST. I roll out of bed at 7:45, chug some water, stumble into my closet voice booth half asleep in my pjs to hook up my sound equipment, am done with the whole thing by 8:15, and go back to bed for the rest of the day.
These bookings are the equivalent of a sporadic hookup buddy who makes sweaty, passionate, but-not-too-much-exertion-on-your-part love to you for 15 minutes, deposits money into your bank account, says, “Ok. See you next time our needs and availability align,” then disappears. And the whole time, you don’t even need to make eye contact.
I’m madly in love and I’m never letting go.
The first time I get the idea to volunteer at the Mandarin-immersion preschool across the street from my house is when I hear a bunch of kids through my window singing a song for Chinese New Year.
Those lil fuckers were loud as shit. I was trying to record and couldn’t with all that ruckus (my slow slide into grumpy-old-man-hood starts at this precise moment).
“SHUT THE FUCKKKK UPPPPPP!!!” I wanna yell through the window.
But I don’t. Cuz, according to my parents, the first English phrase I ever learned was “SHUT UP” from my daycare instructor, and I don’t want this same fate for these lil Asian kids, as loud and annoying as they are at the very moment I’m trying to work.
I burst a blood vessel yelling at them in my head and find something else to do til the singing stops.
It doesn’t.
It just so happens that Mandarin-speaking skills have gotten me booked on more voiceover projects and made me more money than just about any other skill, and, since my only regular usage of the language is speaking to my dad for 30 minutes a week, I needed a way to keep up my fluency (if you can indeed call it that, as I certainly do when asked by prospective clients).
And, well, if you can’t beat em, join em.
So now every Monday and Friday afternoon, I’m across the street from my house, rocking a couple toddlers in my lap, singing, “LIANG ZHI LAO HU//LIANG ZHI LAO HU” loudly and fervidly, annoying the rest of my neighbors.
In retrospect, this probably wasn’t the optimal move to improve my language skills. Not to brag, but I already had the vocabulary of a Mandarin-speaking 3-year-old. Hell, maybe even 4-year-old, if we’re being generous.
Everything is peepeepoopoo.
And if there’s anything I’ve mastered in life, it’s announcing bowel movements in a variety of Asian languages and dialects. Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka, Japanese – hell, I can broadcast my poops to you AND your occupation-enduring, non-Mandarin-speaking Taiwanese grandparents.
When I showed up to tour the facility, having informed the instructors of my intention to work solely on a volunteer basis so I can flake as needed for more important activities, the first question I’m asked is, “Can you change a diaper?”
你會換尿布嗎?
Hah! Nice try, motherfuckers. If I wanted to touch poop for free I’d have my own kids.
But I sometimes change a few diapers anyway, because I desperately want these truly fluent speakers of my once-native tongue to like me…and talk to me.
I want to practice Mandarin. With adults. I want to go to dim sum with people to whom I wouldn’t need to explain the contents of each dish. And I don’t want to drive an hour to do it.
I want to be friends with THESE Asian people. Right here. Across the street from my house.
LIKE ME, GODDAMMIT!!!!!
But they mostly talk to each other. And to the kids.
It’s loud. Chaotic. Everyone has masks on. Each teacher’s Mandarin is accented differently. Some familiar, some indistinguishable from the gibberish spoken by the youngest kids in the group.
Half the time I don’t have the vocabulary to understand what I’m being instructed to do and the other half of the time I don’t have the vocabulary to respond.
I want to sit and hide in the corner.
I get a flashback to my own daycare experience in the Detroit suburbs, sitting alone by the bookshelf staring at picture book after picture book, my only companions in those long, boring days where I couldn’t understand a word anyone was saying and the teacher thought I was dumb as rocks.
It’s as the monks say. Life is cyclical.
I don’t actually know if the monks say that. Or if anyone says that.
But what I do know is that, over the better part of a decade, I’ve managed to carve out space for myself in the world’s most fun-but-oversaturated market through sheer drive, stubbornness, and excessive, unearned optimism, and, for better or worse, these traits are forcefully applied to pretty much every aspect of my life.
So as long as it takes, I will win these fuckers over. And somehow or other, WE WILL. BE.
best friends.
(brb diaper time)
No Money Mo Problems 