AFTER WEDDING PLUG
My Parents Crack Me Up

My parents are simply awesome people. Warm, kind-hearted, cool... All my friends have told me so while growing up. Many of my women friends or acquaintances from Chicago have told me that my mother is their role model for an Asian American woman. People say my father is 'cool', or if they are Korean they say 'muh-shi-ssuh' (read juice man story). Both of them have been generous to their friends, family, and strangers. In all my years living with them in Chicago, we must have had house guests at least two months out of each year. Their friends passing through for work or leisure, or my friends from Northwestern University or University of Chicago (who were on quarter systems) staying at our house even when I was already on my campus. Friends, family, and random out-of-town guests over for Thanksgiving every year. They would volunteer at a soup kitchen for the homeless together or help out numerous local organizations if they believe in their cause.

For these reasons and more, they have had a tremendous influence and impact on the lives of my younger brother and I, so I wanted to pay an indirectly tribute to them during my toast at my brother's wedding. At my friend Peter's wedding, I gave a serious, heart-felt toast, but for my brother I wanted to make it light-hearted. I decided to include some stories about my parents that would naturally make it humorous not just light-hearted.

During one part of the toast I described how my parents had different expectations and views between my brother and I. When my brother went on his mission program last year, my mother would say it me, "Dear, isn't it wonderful that he's going through such a great spiritual experience..."

After he got back from his mission trip, my brother lost 30 lbs. A few days later my dad calls me over, "Bernard... You know Lenny lost 30 lbs. through his mission trip... maybe you should go on a mission trip... (serious silence)"

I continued to talk about how my mother was more direct with me. Ever since I was in college people, especially the engineering students from Hong Kong in my dorm, thought I looked like a young Chow Yun-Fat. A year after graduation, I gain almost 30 lbs. from sitting at a desk, which produced horror in my mother's eyes. One time my friend said to my mom, "Mrs. Moon, do you know a lot of people think Bernard looks like Chow Yun-Fat?"

She turns to me and say, "Dear, you don't look like Chow Yun-Fat. You're just FAT! So please lose some weight!"

I went on to talk about some things my mother use to say to my bro and ended it on a cheerful note.

Since then a couple people have approached me and told me how funny I was during the toast, and they assumed I made those conversations and stories up. Obviously, they didn't know my parents well, so I just nodded while thinking, "No, I wasn't that funny. My parents really said those things to us."