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The ending is a little weird...but I found this to be quite amusing...

Believe

 

During lunch today, La Shy Girl asked me when I stopped believing in Santa Claus. I was ready to answer 4 or 5, but then I suddenly remembered that the doubt actually started creeping in when I was 3 years old. It was the year I asked for Castle Greyskull. On a trip to the store, The Mom's found one and threw it in the cart. My little heart could not be contained...until she told me it was actually for one of my cousins. "You see, little Chino, Santa will be bringing yours on Christmas Day." It must have taken The Mom's some time to recognize the brilliant child she was raising because she wrapped the damn thing in front me. Never even trying to hide it. And then we took it with us to my grandma's on Christmas Eve. All night long, I kept telling my cousin the big box was for him. My cousin, being able to read kept telling me it was for me from Santa. We fought about it all night long.  "But there's no way my mommy would lie to me...not about this," I thought to myself. Lo and behold, when it came time to open presents...the box was indeed for me. Somehow, I recognized the importance to play along and pretend like I didn't know what was going on. I kept up the charade for a couple more years. 

La Shy Girl told me she believed until she was 11 years old, but like many of her childhood memories, she can't quite remember how she found out. This conversation inspired me to ask my friends at what point they stopped believing in Santa and just how they found out the truth. I got some pretty interesting and funny answers. Check them out...

Brother #2:  What are you talking about, stop believing? The guy makes miracles happen every Christmas. 

Brother #1:  Santa could suck my balls. (I don't think he took my question very seriously. The truth is he believed for a very, very long time.)

La Loca: When I was 5 and my mom said, "no estes chingando."

The Female Bestie: Mind you I was totally sheltered. Maybe 11 1/2? I think we asked our parents. 

The Sweet Spirit: Was 7 and walked in on my mother and grandmother wrapping. 

The Hippie: My parents never really played the Santa card. They were more the "Baby Jesus gave us money to buy you stuff" kinda people. But I told my youngest sister when she was 6.

The BFF: When he brought me the shirt I had worn two weeks prior. 

MK: 5. My older cousins told me. 

The Blondie: 12. I heard my parents putting my presents out and I went and saw them. 

Little J: I think I was like 10 and I'm pretty sure one of my siblings ruined it for me. 

La Mari: Around 8? My sisters and I noticed that our parents had the gifts Santa was going to give us. Plus I saw it on TV. 

Little Gi-Unit: 9 years old. Saw the presents inside my parents' closet. 

Lil' Papaz: My parents never let me believe in Santa. Jesus provided our presents. (I remember this story...hilarious!)

The Sixter: When I was 9 or 10. A stupid kid in school told me my parents bought me the gifts. That same year I found all my letters to Santa in my mom's drawer. Also my aunt's husband (a Jehova's Witness) said there was no such thing. (For the record...he would also tell my brother's that Power Rangers were the work of Satan.)

D-Ti: Probably 4th grade. I was cynical so I just asked my parents. They were happy to tell me because they wanted me to help keep the secret with my brother. 

The Bro: Age 12, when my drunk uncle told us how he couldn't afford the good liquor around the holidays 'cus he had to buy the gifts. 

Gotta love my friends! I tell you...parents need to give their kids a bit more credit. They're not as stupid as they think. If I had kids and if I chose to let them believe in Santa I'd go to Dexter lengths to make sure those gifts wouldn't get discovered. The closet never works...never!! 

Even I Think This Is Cute

The Legend Of The Tilcuate

When I get clients in my office, it is my job to discover what it was that got them to their current situation. Often times, it's the loss of a job, the breaking down of a vehicle, or even a brief hospitalization. Then I equip them with the necessary tools, resources and services to hopefully get them back on their feet. For the most part, my cases are pretty standard. And eventually, some clients are able to successfully recover from whatever set back they experienced before coming to me. However, every once in a while, I get a client that just comes at me with the most unexpected shit. Yesterday, one of my regulars was in there just chit-chatting with me as she tends to do now and then. She tells me how her and her husband are really struggling right now so she's trying to find herself a part-time job. She tells me she used to work the night shift at a local gas station. That is until she started seeing a particular snake slither around the premises. Some days she'd see it, but others she just felt like it was out there. She had suspicions of what this snake was but she had to call her mother for confirmation. Sure enough, the description given fit that of the legendary Tilcuate snake.

As much as I didn't wanto ask, I did. "What is this Tilcuate?" Following, is what I was told; True story...I could never make this shit up. Legend has it that the Tilcuate has powers to charm women. Once the woman has been put under the snake's spell, the snake will proceed to suck the woman's breast milk. As it is doing this, the snake releases some poisonous shit back into the breast. When the woman goes to feed her child, the child consumes the poison and dies.

To my client I looked intrigued. Fascinated, even. Inside though, I was all WHAT THE FUCK?! It gets better...she tells me once her mother told her what this snake was capable of, she QUIT HER JOB! On the real. In the name of all that is holy! How can I work with someone like that? How can I ever possibly teach her about budgeting or job searching? But more importantly, have my people never heard of Google? I Googled the fucking snake and found nothing but a mention of the breastmilk thing. And that was categorized as a legend. It truly saddens me that there are people out there who believe in shit like this! This woman quit her job in fear of something her mother told her about. Come on!

Cepillin

Apparently, I used to love this dude when I was a little kid. HOLY SHIT, MOMS!! Why would you let me watch some creepy pedophile dude in clown makeup??!!! I don't get it...

This Is How We Do

You know how gold is a pretty hot commodity right now...I've had some rings lying around that I was never going to wear ever again. The Mom's had been telling me about some lady that buys gold out of her hair salon in Santa Ana. I was intrigued. So I paid the lady  a visit. Dude, seriously...the rings I had were pretty cheap rings...and I got almost $90 for them! Not bad. But what I really wanted to do with this post was show off the lady's business card. Mostly because I thought they were hilarious...but on the real, because she better go and market herself. Shit...if Asians in Santa Ana can own Chinese Food/Cell Phone/Video Stores why the heck can't my people get there Jewelry Store/Hair Salon on? That's all I'm asking...

So, if you got some gold to sell or need a hair cut...give my homegirl a call. Word. 

My Man Date

I'm going to see the Kings Of Leon in concert tomorrow night with my buddy, The Player. It is very rare that I go anywhere without La Shy Girl, so this is kinda foreign to us. I'm pretty excited to go to the concert and to hang out with The Player...my enthusiasm ends there. La Shy Girl on the other hand cannot wait for my "man-date", as she calls it. I'm sure she's looking forward to spending a night by herself...it has been a very long time, but more than anything, I think she's just happy to see me try and socialize with someone who is not a usual. I tell you...she has allowed me a bigger budget than I've ever had when out without her and she came home last night having washed the car so that it's clean for tomorrow. Oh, and she filled up the gas tank. How freakin' cute is she?

Freakin' Hilarious!

So on Typepad, the wonderful people who host chinovaldez.com, you can see how people get to your blog. Often through links on Facebook but mostly through Google searches, folks find this site one way or another. It's always kinda funny to see what they are searching for that gets them here. Sometimes they're looking for something Nicaraguan, or Big Brother. If you've kept up, you know I discuss both these topics on here quite a bit. This morning when I went to check my stats, I came across the most hilarious search I could ever think of to get people to my site. I tell you, I couldn't make this up. So...on the Vietnamese version of MSN, some sicko typed in "Brother & Sixter Fuck Together." I shit you not. And because my favorite cousin, The Sixter, is mentioned on my posts every once in a while, this pervert was led to my site. True story.  Safe to say they probably didn't find what they were looking for.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Costco

So, we’re heading to Costco to pick up some essentials, right? I’m in the furthest right lane (next to the turning lane). I realize that there is a dude behind me who can’t turn because I’m blocking the entrance into his lane. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t care but I’m in a good mood, so I get as close as I possibly can to the car in front of me, therefore, giving the dude behind me enough room to get by. I realize that I’ve gotten almost too close to the car in front so I put my car in reverse. As I’m doing so, I see a Mustang coming at me pretty fast, so I put my car back in drive and wait for my light to turn green. Douchebag in the mustang decides he wants to be dick and honks his horn in a very obnoxious and unnecessary manner. I, of course, give him the one fingered salute as he speeds past me. I feel much better. Then the mustang stops. I say, "Oh, please get out. Please get out." Door opens and out comes a shirtless 16 or 17 year old white kid. Give me a break. Out of the passenger side comes a 16 or 17 year old, short, Hispanic kid possibly cursing at me. (I have my windows rolled up, so can’t really hear anything they’re saying.) Meanwhile my light is still red. I roll down my window, and La Shy Girl immediately rolls it back up. So here are these two boys taunting me to get out of my car. At this point I get the biggest smirk on my face thinking..."What a fucking joke." I stay in my car mostly because I’m a lover not a fighter, but also because I’m 30 years old and I’m not about to actually fight some teenage punks. And I get more satisfaction knowing that me smiling is pissing them off even further, but neither of them actually approaches my car. I finally yell out, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GONNA DO WEBSTER?" La Shy Girl rolls up my window before I get to hear a response. My light turns green and I finish driving to Costco.

Once we were walking around the store, I had to wonder; what kind of country are we living in where even punk little spoiled white kids in Anaheim Hills take the middle finger so seriously? Is this not America? Do I know longer have the right to flip someone off when they piss me off on the road, for fear that I might have to run them down with my car? And how foolish are we when we don’t think things through? Had they tried to inflict any actual damage to LSG and I, how easy wouldn’t it have been for me to get there license plate number, get there home address and let my two Samoan-sized brothers take care of business? I mean, really?

Random Racial