Dragon in Training

By Jonathan Lam on 11/25/17

Tagged: essay

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This essay is what I've submitted as my Common App essay. (I'll assume I'll be safe posting it here given my apparent immunity to blog viewers.) It peeves me. The conclusion. I might edit it and re-post this. It's a bit too abstract right now, too distracted.

I wrote it a bit on a whim. I can't explain exactly why I chose to center the writing about my heritage, because that was already the subject of many short-essay questions. I was going to write about Rubik's cubing or programming or bowling or math, those subjects I preach to my fellow classmates and underclassmen every possible moment. But I think this was an experience that changed me, so I'll write about it. It may not be one of those "fun fact essays" ("I lost every election in high school," "I cook dinner for my father every night"), nor is it even very touchy, but it is at least true.

See how many themes you can pick out. Culture is only one of many.

"Dragon in Training"

Ever since my mom brought home that “HTML for Dummies” book from the old book sale, I knew I would become a programmer. Nothing held me back—programming was so approachable, so mathematical, so intellectual, so logical, so beautiful, so endless— I would become a technology magnate. I knew that any job I would ever take would involve programming.

I was wrong from the start. There was no interview. A single phone call from my mother signed my soul over to her sister, and then I was cast into the jungle to feed the animals on a two-week job contract.

I caught only slivers of the animals’ obscure thoughts. It was usually some pronunciation of cha or kah-fey. When I didn’t understand them (which occurred quite often), they would become more dangerous so that I shook when I handed them their food, afraid of losing a skinny arm. Luckily, my aunt would swoop to the rescue and deftly retrieve their order before they could get agitated. She was a dragon, vibrant and powerful, tending to the predators like meek lambs.

I once trembled enough to drop a food-container. I could barely understand the waiting client’s remark: Boys shouldn’t be working here. To which the dragon promptly replied, Children should learn all the skills they need to learn as an adult, and that was that.

The customer’s statement was more agreeable to me than my aunt’s. I wanted to be a programmer.

But I was far from the digital realm’s comfort. I was in fact hired at the Yummy Bakery in Brooklyn’s Chinatown. The Chinese dialects were no more intelligible to me than tiger roars— not because I was not ethnically Chinese (which I am), but rather because I am a “bad Asian,” culturally scarred by formative English-second-language courses. I worked fourteen-hour shifts, taking orders when I understood and wildly gesticulating towards the dragon when I couldn’t. I learned that cha was “tea” and kah-fey was “coffee.” I learned to look at the change we received to make sure that the dime was not a Chinese cent and the quarter was not 200 Colombian pesos.

There was the time when a woman took food from the shelf, went to the counter under the pretense of acquiring a napkin, and left without napkin nor payment. Nobody noticed until it dawned on the dragon’s face-scales like a nightmare come to mind. She told me, cackling at her own lapse of vigilance, but pursued it no further. That customer was just a sly wolf.

That cackle was evil but not evil. It hinted that stealing again would mean annihilation. It spoke of past mistakes and fruitful toil.

It struck me that I could not reproduce the sound. I lacked the conviction and my lips the strength, as if afraid the ultrasonic waves were knives that would reflect off the pastel-colored walls to cut me. I managed only a weak smile. But it disappeared upon receiving puzzled glances from customers.

That smile crept up on me. Little moments: a child receiving an ice cream pastry, or the painful grimace under the stress of embarrassment. So much emotion yet none of the bittersweetness of experience, making me wonder how many smiles of joy, pain, and everything in between formed the dragon’s cackle.

No customer knew I was a valedictorian, nor did it matter. As an entrepreneur, who cared what my high school grades were? A polite smile, nod, and xie-xie seemed more capable than twelve years of schooling. The currency of empathy and etiquette suddenly became worth far more than Bitcoin.

I could not hide from my fear of personalities— alas, the counter was too short and myself too tall. But almost instantly, customers transmogrified into more docile forms and their words to human representations. My trembling ceased. The power of a lip-curl.

True dragons smile.