My world at the age of 11 revolved around
My home in the country with my parents and sister,
Two sets of grandparents,
A church and church family where I spent a half-dozen hours a week (at least),
My dad’s school where I spent half of every summer,
And my own school, Medulla Elementary.
To say my life was idyllic would be an understatement.
I knew little of the harshness of the world.
My parents never argued in front of us—and we never even heard anything resembling conflict through the walls.
We knew of no verbally abusive language,
No hateful actions,
No divorces, no one accused of a crime, no one out to hurt others.
The worst thing I can remember happening during the time was the death of one of our cats who escaped and got run over.
And I can remember no time I was ever truly scared
With the exception of two different nights when we came home to discover our home had been burglarized,
the scary German shepherds that ran loose in the neighborhood,
the dark hallways where the boogeyman lived,
and the wildfires down the road.
Mom and Dad always said they loved us.
They read stories to us,
they tucked us in at night,
And we always knew that they would be there for us.
Leave it to Beaver may have been primetime television before I was born,
But I lived it.
However, instead of Ward doing all the “male” tasks while June awaited Ward’s arrival home with dinner ready,
Mom helped Dad outside and supported his interests,
And Dad was one who would help wash dishes, do laundry, and vacuum.
Mom was one mean ax chopper, and Dad could wash dishes with great joy.
The real world—the ugliness possible—was unknown to me.
I had no awareness of the Vietnam War and only knew that the Russians had scary nuclear weapons.
My only awareness of the news was through re-run episodes of You Are There, told by Walter Cronkite in black and white on a film projector.
This all changed in the fall of my 6th grade year.
Because I was bumped ahead a grade in reading each year throughout elementary school,
When I entered my final year at Medulla, they had no idea what to do with me.
I became a library aide and put together book displays for other students.
My whole world broke open when I was called to Mr. Hollingsworth’s office.
He introduced me to a young lady who was 5 years older than I was—I was 11, and she was 16.
Her family had just been sponsored by the Lutheran church in town,
And she had just arrived in America from a refugee camp for survivors of the conflict in Cambodia.
Just like I had no awareness of the Vietnam War, I knew nothing of any war in Cambodia,
And I knew nothing of Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge.
If I am honest, I doubt I even knew a country called Cambodia existed.
I had no idea 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians had been killed from 1975 to 1979 while I rode my bicycles and played school at home with my stuffed animals.
I knew nothing of Pol Pot’s attempts to create a Cambodian “master race.”
All I knew was my life—
But that morning I saw before me a young lady who looked scared to death as she faced me.
Her name was Huoy.
She was new to the U.S. She was new to Florida.
And she knew about 10 words of English.
My new task in the fall of 1980 at the age of 11 was to become her personal tutor,
Helping her learn English,
Helping her figure out life in America,
Assisting her with schoolwork.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
That first day all we did was walk around campus.
I pointed at an oak tree and said, “Tree.”
She looked at her Cambodian-English dictionary, looked at both words, and repeated “tree”
Before we moved on to “car” and “door” and “sky.”
She took notes so she could study the words and memorize them.
She knew Cambodia could no longer be her home.
She had to learn English for her new life.
That day began a daily routine where we spent an hour or more together.
We added more words to her English vocabulary,
and she learned how to write in English,
and she and I worked on math.
She drew me pictures of flowers I had never seen before.
She gave me notes with her new English vocabulary beside.
Cambodian words on the sheets of paper she gave me,
Beautiful written Cambodian characters that were artistic pieces all by themselves.
Prior to the days of the internet and varied food options, someone like me did not have experience with other cultures. My only experience with Asian food was La Choy’s Chow Mein in a can.
I shared my culture with her when she came to church events with me, flying kites,
Hunting for candy in field thrown by Mr. Wilson during our Easter event,
And she shared her Cambodian culture with me, providing me homemade egg rolls her dad made and teaching me a few words in her language.
We became friends.
That spring she shared her story—or part of it.
She told me with tears in her eyes of journeys through the jungles,
Of running for her life,
Of Pol Pot’s men hunting her and her family,
Of the deaths of her mother and brother in the jungles.
Her stories challenged me, terrified me, and broke my heart for her.
Her life experiences were more than I could even imagine at that age.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
In addition to the world crashing into my elementary school that fall with my new friend’s arrival, ,
the world crashed into my living room later that year—during the spring of 1981– as I saw Secret Service agents whisk away President Reagan, barely escaping an assassination attempt.
Real-world events suddenly became real.
This event was the first news event that brought the dangers of the world into my home.
Followed soon after was the landing of the Columbia space shuttle in April of 1981, as seen by my classmates and me in our portable classroom. Five classes crowded around one TV that must have been using an antenna to get the footage.
That year, that friendship, and that experience of hearing of her life story, of the horrors she had experienced—
All of this revealed for me a whole new world.
A whole new reality.
A world I could not even imagine, but a world that was happening outside of my experience.
Through her friendship and her stories,
she provided me with an awareness early on that horrible, ugly things happened outside of my idyllic life.
However, through her love and her smile, I also learned that this type of hate did not guarantee destruction.
Huoy was a model of strength, of goodness, and of friendship.
She showed me how to live through my own hardships that would eventually come—and how to keep on loving.
I may have taught Huoy the basics of English,
But she taught me all about life.
Afterword: Huoy and I went to the same junior high, but our classes were never together after that sixth grade year. When I moved across town to another high school, prior to social media, it was hard to stay in touch. I saw her one additional time after college, and she told me she had graduated with honors from University of South Florida. I have looked for her for years on social media and on the internet. I may have finally discovered her address. I plan to send her this, along with a letter, hoping that perhaps I will reconnect all these years later. To learn more about the Cambodian genocide, check out the fabulous movie called First They Killed My Father or the documentary called The Killing Fields.
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