March 12, 1960 - San Diego gets a new resident

My mom got pregnant in 1959... her doctor told her that she couldn't use soy sauce anymore... WHAT!!!???? She's Japanese what kind of crazy talk is that? If it was dangerous for women to use soy sauce while they were pregnant, where did all those healthy Asian children come from? She decided the man was insane and kept using soy sauce.

I was born in San Diego at the Navy Hospital. It was a big pink stucco kind of a place. Sort of across the street from the San Diego Zoo... (which gave my brother YEARS of teasing ammunition). We visited San Diego again when I was 11 and the thing is still there... and it's still pink.

My being a girl was apparently unplanned for, since they had only thought up a name for a boy. The boy would be named after his father, Donald, or Don for short. Well, shit... it's a girl. So what did they do? They slapped an 'na' at the end of Don and called it a day. This is how I got my first name. Charming, huh? My second name had some thought put into it and is actually a girl name. A Japanese girl name that I was told meant something along the lines of 'beautiful dancer' (which, if you've ever witnessed me dance you would know is very, very far from the truth). My middle name is Terumi. Enough about names, let's get on to the me joining you all on this whirling clod of dirt in space!

Those were the days when daddies just sat around in the waiting room... waiting. Eventually a doctor or nurse came out and said "You have a (insert sex here)!" and then took you in to a room to see it. So, dad got the word that he had a healthy baby girl (despite the use of soy sauce) and was taken into the clean, no-evidence-of-how-much-work-goes-into-birthing, room to see the soy sauce user and tiny me.

I'm not sure how much people know about newborns. You see when babies are still in the womb, they have  a very fine coating of hair all over their skin. This hair usually falls off before they are actually born. Mine did not. It waited until a bit after I was born. When my dad first saw me he kinda freaked out a bit until it was explained to him. Within an hour or two it was all gone and I looked like a normal newborn that you could show to your family. Go me! Not even an hour old and already causing unnecessary stress!

Naturally, over the years dad has told this story dozens of times, adding in the zoo factor and insinuating that he thought at first that maybe his baby got mixed up with a monkey baby from across the street.... giving my brother even MORE ammunition. Thanks, dad. (shut up, Don)


Next time - It's time to start keeping score...