Tales of Tenth Grade

My grandpa's favorite story to tell our family is his "8 Dollar" story, or the story portraying his immigration into this country. My whole family on my mom's side would be gathered together on Indian holidays such as Diwali and every year, as if it were tradition, my grandpa would start telling us about how he, the first member of my mom's family, immigrated to America. He would always tell us about how he walked through Ellis Island with only $8 in his pocket and was eventually able to be successful enough to send both his daughters through four years of college. My grandpa on my dad's side tells our family very different stories. On Christmas Eve every year, when my dad's family gathers to celebrate their holidays, we all listen to my grandfather tell his stories. He usually tells us stories about his 3 deployments in Vietnam, and how each one of them affected him and his friends. He tells us stories about friends he lost in the war and friends he s...

Throughout my life, I find myself cherishing many of the things that I do. From enjoying times with friends to immersing myself in new environments, I find myself in a consistent pattern in what brings me joy and makes me me. While there are so many little things that bring me random happiness, I can concentrate most of what's important to me into three main pillars that constitute a "Happy Colin." These three simple elements - family, baseball, and giving back - combine in just the right way that makes it the "perfect compound" for me. The first element of this compound, and the most important, is my family. My family is my core. While it's hard to explain, it's like the air I breathe - I can't exist without it. Of course, I can write about the cliche that they are there for me and that they support me and that they love me. While that's true, there's something else that just makes them the most important people to me. They are the only peo...

I’ll always love listening to my dad’s music on long car rides. When I was younger, we would often listen to these mixtapes my dad made for my mom. Before I was born, he received the album The Eminem Show for his birthday, which includes the song My Dad’s Gone Crazy. The song features Marshall Mathers’ daughter, Hailie Jade, as a little girl. My dad must’ve been inspired because these mixtapes he made included short audio-clips of my sister speaking when she was little and would say spontaneous cute things. I’ll never forget that. Listening to the songs on those tapes is a feeling I can’t describe, deeper than nostalgia. To me, music is a universal language, with the power to wrap people up and tie them together forever. As I write this, I’m having a little trouble trying to find the words to say how I feel about music without using vague, cliche lines. But it’s true. Music is so much more than what I can say with only words.  Initially, I had a bunch of ideas for thing...

My house is as old as me. Kinda. It's actually a few months older. My parents were really young when they got married, mom was 21, dad was 25. I think that their age was partially the reason why they moved around a bunch after they got married. Maybe trying to deflect the fact that they were so young and already "settling down." In fact, my dad, being the tech guy he is, set up all our personal emails with "@movinalot" in honor of our status as frequent movers (very cute but always awkward when I'm buying something and have to spell out my email address to make sure they don't accidentally add a g to "movin"). It's weird, though, because I never knew that life. My mom, dad, brother, and sister shacked up in a hotel for a couple of months while our home in Sparta, NJ was being assembled, right next to the Sterling Hill Mining Museum. A few tapes from my pa's old camcorder documented my house in the building process. A short few months af...