Soundtrack Of My Life

By Jack Yee

Marlon is in high school and yet to hit puberty.His worrisome mother has gone to the herb store in order to make a soup out of a deer penis to hopefully bring on the change of life. Things do change on prom night when during picture taking with his prom date, he meets his soulmate. Follow him on his journey from high school to middle age with the help of basketball, food, and Earth,Wind,and Fire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jack Yee
• Release date: Mar 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301995127

Book preview

FFUN

I am a product of my music. I'm not the sophisticated jazz aficionado or the deep-thinking radical, anti-war 60's child. I am forever linked to the 15 or so years spanning the 70's into the early 80's. A lot of my life has been influenced by my music and to this day, I listen to music from that era on a daily basis. What's surprising to some people is the fact that my choice of wife was predicated on the music of Earth, Wind, and Fire and though that choice has led me to some impressive valleys and peaks in life, I wouldn't change a thing because it made me what I am today, and if you knew me back then, this final product could not have been foreseen by anyone. For I have seen what I could easily have become.

You see, I was a junior in high school in San Francisco in 1977 at George Washington High. Being Asian and the only son, and being the youngest meant that either nothing was going to be expected of me or everything was going to be expected of me. Guys in my situation usually fall into one of two categories. You either had everything done for you by your mother and your sisters who knew that their place in life was pretty much determined (mainly, getting some education, and then marrying some Chinese dude who would provide for you), while you achieved some higher education degree. The second category was the situation where the girls all achieved higher educational degrees and the boy would go to junior college and then acquire some blue-collar job that didn't require any higher education, knowing full well that his future was secure because the entire family knew that he would inherit the bulk of the family estate.

I'd seen both situations growing up with members of my own family tree and believe me, I did not want to fall in the second category because these guys usually never left home, and they usually never married. Not getting married was certainly not a sign of failure, but it usually ended up being a sign of social ineptitude.

At the time in 1977, I think my main concern on a day to day basis was to avoid getting beaten up, and to make sure I kept my string of straight A's going. At 5 foot 3 and 97 pounds dripping wet, and being a -6.00 myope with glasses (which meant I was blind as a bat without any correction) that would perpetually be sliding down my nose, that was no small task. My lack of size, along with my mental prowess, pretty much locked up my spot in the social stratus of high school - the Asian nerd. Thanks to other factors (including, but not limited to bad haircuts courtesy of my mom which made me look a bit like Moe on The Three Stooges, a crush on Lindsay Wagner of The Bionic Woman show, and the constant concern over when puberty would arrive), I pretty much held the top spot on a high school campus that was FLOODED with numerous other candidates.

The many other candidates at school were destined for one thing, and that was the simple fact that we would end up being friends with people in the same social strata.

The transition from grammar school to junior high (though this term seems outdated - I only hear middle school these days) was a tough one for me. My sense of direction was never my strong suit and getting lost trying to find woodshop on one of the school's wings was a daily source of stress. I couldn't be late for class because that would result either getting in trouble or, horror of horrors, possibly a lower grade.

And let's be honest. My parents' generation are the original tiger moms, the overbearing maternal presence that would make sure you got straight A's, as well as making sure you would become the next Mozart, and that you would to learn to read and write Chinese. And, we had tiger dads and tiger sisters. My oldest sister was studying to be a teacher at San Francisco State when I was in the 2nd grade. One day, I had brought home a less than stellar report card, and what transpired that late afternoon either a) scarred me for the rest of my life or b) was the motivation for me to excel at school.

In a nut shell, Mom first yelled at me about the improvement needed grades in my English and Math evaluations. I think the poor showing in math was the tipping point because, to people in my parents' generation, math and science were the gold standard of classes. For you to have any chance in succeeding in life, you had to excel in these classes.

Dad, watching Mom's flailing about my failings, went into Chinese Dad mode, which meant knocking me on the side of the head with his second knuckles, while uttering the famous Cantonese admonishment, Mock neiga how! which translates into knock you in the side of the head with my second knuckles! So after seeing my parents lay into me, my oldest sister Lydia seemed to take a bit of pleasure in tag-teaming and gave a blistering assessment of my future. She would make sure she looked over all my homework assignments, she assured my parents, and be certain that I would not only finish each assignment, but they would all have perfect results.

And that's how my academic life was ever since that day - constant fear of not getting a perfect score, so that the actual enjoyment out of learning anything was overshadowed by the fear of failure. Now, my story was definitely not unique by any stretch of the imagination. I just needed to look over at one of the boys in my life to know I had it a lot better than my friend Howard.

Howard, I had known since junior high and back then, he was about an inch taller than me, but he outweighed me by about thirty pounds. If he had anything close to resembling a rice bowl haircut, he could have passed for Sammo Hung's little brother or the second son of Kim Jong Il. Howard always had this slight limp to his walk due to the fact that one of his legs was shorter than the other due to crashing into a tree while riding his skateboard back in elementary school.

We were sitting outside the Washington High courtyard having burritos bought from the Cable Car Canteen which was our local roach coach.

Did you buy your ticket? I asked.

Yeah, Did you?

Not yet. I'm not sure I want to go.

Marlon, Howard intoned, you promised.

Our great debate was whether or not I was going to purchase/waste money on a ticket to that night's school dance. Being a cool guy who had to beat away the ladies on a daily basis and with moves that would rival John Travolta's moves to You Should Be Dancing on Saturday Night Fever, one would wonder why there was any trepidation at all. But in reality, I was scared to death of girls. Oh, I had some crushes back in elementary school and in junior high as well, but I knew that due to my physical limitations and extreme social awkwardness, that any interactions with girls was not happening. My main motivation for possibly going to my first dance was that it was called Ffun, named after the current hit by Vallejo, California's own Con Funk Shun off the Secrets album (round 12 inch vinyl record played on something called a phonograph - please Google or search on Wikipedia).

I had heard this song first on KSOL (107.7 on the FM) and then later on KDIA (1310 on the AM) and fell in love with its positive upbeat lyrics and the way the music made the idea of dancing with a side of attempted romancin', well, fun. And this was that seminal moment when I started to associate black music with cool and began my love affair with R&B and funk.

Now Howard was way cooler than I, especially with the ladies, though people have a tough time believing me when I tell them that. Howard always had a weight problem. He'd been heavy in junior high, heavy in high school, heavier in college, and heaviest today. But that never stopped him with girls or women because he always took a shot. If you needed a shot taken in a basketball game, I was probably your guy, but back then, if you were female, had two legs and the magic patch between, well, Howard was THE guy who wouldn't hesitate.

At a time in my life where KISSING a girl was some unfathomable concept, Howard had already rounded third base ready to slide headfirst (pun intended) into home plate. In later years, Howard's sexual escapades would provide Harvey and I with endless laughter, bits of envy, and on occasion, abject shock. But in 1977, Howard's true test in life would be his father, who was this bigshot Chinatown guy who seemed to own countless businesses on Grant Ave, Stockton Ave. and Kearney Street. Howard was known to us as The Six Million Dollar Man because of all the stuff his father was into. And if there's one thing that Howard's father made clear at a young age, it was that Howard was going to be a doctor. And he was going to have to earn his keep by working at the family restaurant, The Golden Pavilion on Sacramento and Grant. Howard would take the bus after school and bus tables for the dinner shift a couple of nights a week and he would also work Sundays, pushing the dim sum carts, filled with the delicious siu mai (pork dumplings), don tat (mini egg custard tarts), and ha gow (steamed shrimp dumplings) for the tourists to try.

Howard said, I don't have to work tonight, so I'm going for sure. Just meet me at Doggie Diner at seven o'clock.

I knew in my heart that I wanted to go, just for the sake of wondering what it would be like to be at something that resembled a social activity. Growing up, I always felt excluded from any activities that the cool kids partook in. I remember in junior high when the big thing was the slam book. The slam book was just this notebook filled with questions that was passed around to get people's opinions, and after you displayed your acumen, you would just sign your name so everyone would know who was responsible for all this righteous knowledge. There were questions about who was the cutest, which teachers sucked, best Spinner's song (the choice back then was Games People Play). I would sit in class, heavy in anticipation for May Lynn to look over at me, wondering what my thoughts were on a plethora of subjects, and pass over the golden book.

I never got the book.

Little things like that, while seemingly innocent enough to any bystander, would, in totality with life's accumulation of little things like that, really had an effect on me. Was I ever going to be good enough for anything, or anybody?

Alright, I said, We're gonna eat first. Doggie Diner, a small hot dog and burger joint on 25th and Geary, was the closest thing we had to fast food in the Richmond District. It was visited mostly by high school kids, who didn't seem to mind the ever-present aroma of grease, and the never-cleaned counters and chairs. I had a particular affection for their deep fried burrito, though with my nervousness with girls, coupled with an already iffy intestinal system...well, that was a lot for a kid with zero knowledge in this particular arena to handle.

And so after school that Friday, I went home and did what most people in my situation did on Friday afternoons - I started my homework. My sister Dana, 17 months older than I, was not yet home. She was the starting forward on the girls basketball team, the team that would win the city championship that year, and she was undoubtedly at practice. Dana was the star athlete in the family, the pride and joy of Dad, because she was not only a good athlete, she was a great athlete. And not only was she a great athlete, she had won the award for best student-athlete. When we used to have neighborhood basketball games, guess who was picked first - and then guess who was picked last.

You hungry? asked my mom.

No, I had some chips already. I said. Oh, I'm not gonna eat dinner at home tonight.

Why not?

I'm going to school tonight with Howard.

She took out some two day old chow fun, flat rice noodles usually served in a gravy with some meat and vegetables, that had, by the looks of it, already been resteamed a few times already. Don't stay out late, she started, lots of gangs out there. And don't talk to any black people. They want to get you young people to sell drugs for them.

I cringed a bit. Drugs were pretty non-existent in my world, except for my friend Mitch and Frank, the car freak and pothead who lived up the block and also happened to be dating my middle sister, Sharon.

Frank was a pretty interesting character. We only knew him because he worked as a mechanic at the gas station around the corner, and we always saw him fiddling around with his blue VW Beetle in his driveway. But we really got to know him when he rang our bell, and asked if we had a certain tool he needed to fix his car. Now, this guy was a mechanic, and he had every tool imaginable. So Lydia went into Dad's tool box and started fishing around for something that fit the description of what Frank was looking for and pulled out a regular flat head screwdriver. Upon seeing what Lydia had pulled out of our basic tool box, Frank yelled out, Perfect! Just what I was looking for!

We didn't really need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that Frank was making an excuse to come over, in hopes of making some face time with my other sister, Sharon. Frank was a real character back then. He would, for recreation, find the cars of people he didn't care for and put his orange juice/ Coke mixture in their gas tanks (in the days before locks were put on the gas caps). He always seemed jittery to me, and he must have worried about things a lot because he suffered from ulcers at a pretty young age. He had shoulder length hair and wore these John Lennon frames that really made him look like a hippy who, no doubt, enjoyed listening to Cheech and Chong make joke about smoking reefer.

At Washington High, the drug of choice was the Quaalude, a popular sedative in the seventies that were abused regularly at the discos, but I didn't tell Mom that all the people I saw taking drugs were Chinese. I had no idea what the black people were taking, and not one of them ever tried recruiting me.

Don't worry, I sighed, I will be home by nine.

Make sure you practice piano before you go. She went back to the fridge and took out a small pot and put in on the stove. You can't go anywhere until you drink your soup.

This time, I really cringed.

The 'soup' Mom had taken out of the fridge was the cure for her son's...lack of physical presence. When I was in elementary school, she was already concerned because I was the second smallest boy in the class, surpassed only by Anthony McGillicutty who would later go on life being a celebrity impersonator of Davy Jones of the Monkees. The pediatricians at Kaiser tried to reassure Mom that I was a late bloomer and that there was really nothing wrong with me, but I think it was hard for her to accept because Mom was kind of a beauty queen as a youngster, and I think that her kids' shortage of her genes in that department caused her some anguish. So after she was dismissed by my doctors with a recommendation for Theragran vitamins for me to take, Mom took matters into her own hands and visited the one place where she knew the answers were - the American Ex-Im herbal shop on Grant Ave. which was owned by none other than Howard's father, Mr. Chinatown Bigshot.

As Mom put down the steaming bowl of soup, I knew she wasn't going anywhere until I finished every last drop. She went on about how much money it cost to buy the ingredients and that for it to work, I had to finish every single milliliter. Your dad worked very hard so you could have this soup, she insisted. I had no doubt Dad worked very hard. In fact, I never really saw the man except on Sundays.

Now, I know drinking a bowl of soup should not be difficult. Close your eyes, nine big swallows, and it's done. Move on, go get changed and get ready for some deep fried burritos, and then go experience something resembling a life at my first school dance. Maybe ask a girl to dance, like Carly Lew.

But the mental block for me was this most salient fact.

The soup was made up from a boiled deer penis.

Yep, there are so many psychological layers with that one. A soup made of penis was supposed to make me grow. I had not hit puberty yet. I hadn't 'grown' yet. All in all, a very confusing time for me. I didn't know about girls, I didn't know about sex. Howard telling me about entering a girl's private parts didn't resonate with anything in my past. In fact, I had only read about masturbation in my family life class (my first foreign language class), and the only thing I remember reading about it was that it said that 95 percent of all males did it (I had not partaken at that point). So when my family life teacher passed around a survey of our classes' sexual activities, I checked off that I did masturbate only because I wanted to be in the majority.

Of course, when he read out the results of the survey, he said, On the subject of masturbation by males in this class of 15 males, only one of you does. This was followed by snickers and laughter and I swear, I could feel 28 sets of eyes all boring in on me, and the funny thing was that I'm pretty sure all fifteen of us lied.

I'm glad that the soup was watery and not really too salty (something Mom's cooking would suffer from for years), because if it looked anything like Campbell's New England Clam Chowder, I would be having some serious discussions with a psychiatrist.

It tasted like all of Mom's soups, bland with hints of some earthiness, kind of like a watered down mushroom broth.

So after a fifteen minute tooth-brushing session, a gourmet dinner of burrito and fries, and a nervous five block walk, Howard and I entered the boys' gymnasium at George Washington High, home of the Eagles, and the setting of my first foray into the world of the dance party.

I had never seen a DJ before. I had never seen the gym with so many artificial lights. I had never seen my classmates dressed so...fancy.

It was, of course, a microcosm of the setting outside the gym. There were the Asians, my people, standing around the snack table, seemingly inhaling all the carrot and celery sticks, the whites off to the side who reportedly were the ones into marijuana, and the blacks off in another corner, resplendent in their leather jackets and really, the only ones with a semblance of rhythm. The music was loud, the air thick due to the lack of circulation, and the possibilities endless. There were the requisite teachers there, making sure that no funny business was going on, and I saw two of our physical education teachers, Coach A, the Washington High institution who would coach all the boys basketball teams, and Miss T, the girls basketball coach. I didn't know it at the time, but Miss T would eventually fulfill all my requirements of the stereotypical picture of the lesbian high school phys ed teacher. She was probably the first lesbian I ever knew.

Within the Asians present, there were sub-classes. First you had the cool guys, the ones who were actually asked to fill out the slam books. These guys would not hesitate to ask a girl to dance, and they had their fair share of girls asking them to dance as well. They were popular and they had the Russell Wong factor. Russell Wong was this Chinese-American actor who was featured in The Joy Luck Club movie who seemed to be the first guy from our race on the big screen that made Asian women swoon. You also had the 'kai dois', or the bad boys, the ones who may or may not have had some affiliation with some Chinese gang. These guys were down a rung on the pretty boy meter, but they could have a girlfriend that was about as good looking as they were, not stunning, but definitely not cringe-inducing. In the culinary comparisons, these two were like bone-in ribeyes and t-bone steak.

And then there were the Howards and my ilk, the 70/30 ground beef who never knew how to dress for style, whose main choice of wardrobe was always a t-shirt with jeans or cords. These usually came from Sears or some other discount store, never from Macy's or the Emporium. Awkward, nerdy, looking kind of like a gremlin, stared at with morbid curiosity about what was there, but always judged at a safe distance.

And there was a whole line of us leaning against the wall that separated the girls' gym from the boys', looking out at the mass of humanity; smiling, dancing, and trying to cop a feel here and there. That moment in my life is always relived whenever I hear Kool and the Gang's hit song 'Get Down On It', whenever lead singer J.T. Taylor yells, Get your back up off the wall, dance, c'mon!

Howard looked over at me and said, I'm gonna ask her to dance. He was pointing over at Patty Jew, a girl in our class who was in our third tier world. Average looking, unsexy, bad skin, with thick glasses, but she did have two legs and (I assume) the magic patch because as the years would pass, it became clear that Howard was one that never cared as much about the drapes as he did the carpeting.

So as the DJ started to play Heatwave's 'Boogie Nights', Howard walked over to Patty, ensconced safely in the confines of her girlfriend fence, and asked her. I really was expecting her to turn him down, but to my surprise, he led her out to the dance floor and though they initially looked awkward, they both hit their stride, easily getting into the stylish vocal treats offered by Keith and Johnny Wilder, brothers and lead singers for Heatwave.

I talked to a few of my friends there, discussing the upcoming chemistry exam in Mr. Jones' class with Chester Lam, and the math homework with Lucky Lim, one of the only people in my life back then who didn't have both parents. Lucky's father died when we were in elementary school, but Lucky was Coach A's favorite student. When he first called out Lucky's name for roll call in gym back in the 10th grade, he said, Your name's Lucky? Do you have a horse I can bet on?

And then I saw Carly Lew.

Now I may have not hit puberty yet, but I knew a good looking girl when I saw one. And Carly definitely fit that bill. I think all the Asian males had a crush on her, and I think the main reason was that she..didn't look like a girl.

She already looked like a woman.

She dressed nicely, like she was ready to go to work downtown at some law office. She wore makeup, (not many, if any other, Asian girl did this in high school back then), she wore dresses with pantyhose or nice pantsuits, but always tastefully done. Her hair was always nicely permed, and I think she caused my lifelong obsession with that 70's perm/feather hair look (Farrah Fawcett, Victoria Principal, Catherine Bach). As some great comedians have said about pretty women, and as far as Carly was concerned, I'm pretty sure she's caused more seed to be spilled than Mohammed Ali at a bird feeder.. She had those almond shaped, huge eyes along with a great tan - she pretty much looked like an Asian version of Kate Middleton.

Plus, she had legs.

And boobs.

And back then, before everything we ate was injected with hormones, people developed late. Maybe not as late as me, but Asian women didn't develop early... and they didn't have breasts back then. That was what made Carly the poster girl for all of us guys. All three tiers. The rumor was that she was dating some college guy who owned a car and had facial hair. Pretty heady stuff.

Look, I knew that she was way out of my league. I could look, I could stare, but in my three years of high school, I would never utter a word to this girl and I'm pretty sure she never knew who I was. I was short, not physically attractive in any shape or form, and had no social skills in talking to anyone outside my family at home, and my brethren at school. I could see my future, living at home with my parents, being the dutiful son because I would have no life outside that, maybe even having to go to China to shop for a bride (second tier, maybe because she wanted citizenship so badly). I would have a steady job, save all my money because I would never have to pay rent to my parents. I would have a nice car, all the latest toys, and I would never consider moving out of the city. I would inherit the house I was living in and spend my nights watching five hours of television. I would think that driving across the Bay Bridge was traumatic, and even though I lived in the city, there would be some neighborhoods that I would only know by name, never daring to venture out of my comfort circle.

I had seen a lot of this already in other families and I thought this was perfectly normal.

Howard ended dancing five times that night, including a slow dance with Christine Hong, who had a reputation of not buttoning her blouse all the way to the top, resulting in some brief glances at a bra strap on occasion. He seemed to be holding her pretty tightly and his hands were starting to go south of the equator, but Coach A walked by and Howard moved his hands up faster than Bruce Lee's famous one inch punch. I posted a giant bagel (and really, I knew that going in, so it was not too sad) and there was comfort in that there were a bunch of zeroes posted that night.

The real highlight, of course, was the last song played which was Ffun by Con Funk Shun. The horns and tight vocals pulsated throughout the gym. Everyone hopped onto the dance floor and just boogied.

Well, almost everybody.

Nowadays, when I play the Secrets CD in my car, which features Ffun, I always smile because I'm reminded that even though major parts of my life back then were painful, there were some memorable moments.

ALWAYS AND FOREVER

Hey, are you going to church this week?

Yeah. Which service are you going to?

Let's do the 9:30, then we can go to Sun Wah Kue.

The fact that I was having this conversation was amazing, even more so because I was having it with Mitch Lee, the last person you would ever think would be going to church. The only way the two words 'church' and 'Mitch' could have conceivably been put in a sentence together would have been Mitch is going to Church's Chicken or Mitch firebombed a church and is now on the FBI's most wanted list.

Granted, Mitch was not religious by any means, and neither was I at that point. But we did have one common bond, one that I would never have foreseen us forging when I first met Mitch in junior high.

Mitch was bad news. He was one of those trouble-makers, always ready to put his brutish stamp on any unsuspecting victim. I've seen him take a kid's ice cream cone and smash it up on his nose, making the poor schmuck look like a jack-in-the-box. I've seen him get into an argument with some other thug who was sitting in a car, and they were yelling about something this guy did to Mitch's brother, Maurice. Words escalated and this guy was in the act of getting out of his car, when Mitch ran up and absolutely, with all his might, smashed the car door right onto the guy's leg. I heard this grotesque snap and the guy let out this sickening scream. The guy ended up with a permanent limp and Mitch's reputation was sealed right then and there. I had heard other tales as well, about how he had done a home invasion burglary two blocks from where I lived, and that he was friends with a bouncer for one of the strip clubs in the Tenderloin which enabled him to get a lap dance...while he was in junior high.

My first introduction to Mitch was in seventh grade math class when he asked to see my homework. If it was anybody else asking for my homework, I would have ignored them, and at that time, I would have built a fortress of textbooks around me to make sure no one saw my answers. But Mitch had, shall we say, a persuasive charm, about him. Maybe it was the brass knuckles, or the nunchuks and metal flying stars he fashioned in wood and metal shop, or the hunting knife strapped to his calf. Any of those things would automatically cause a trembling 13 year old to hand over his algebra homework.

Mitch was one of the people who could look cool even though he had glasses. It probably helped that he perpetually wore these aviator style metal frames with dark sunglass lenses, so you could never see his eyes, which I think he preferred. Mitch was one of the earliest proponents of weight lifting, so he liked to rock out the tank tops to show you his guns, named Smith and Wesson. Mitch's only physical problem was acne which he thought he could solve by suntanning whenever the sun broke out in the Richmond district.

But I have to say that one of the main things that saved me back then from utter failure in so many other domains was the fact that I was successful in one area where most of my brethren failed.

And that was the fact that I could dribble and shoot a basketball. I wasn't great at that time (unlike my sister), but in my circle of friends, I could pass muster. I was pretty quick for a small dude, and I learned how to shoot because I wasn't going to get much done going into the land of trees where my every shot would get blocked. My early heroes in the NBA were the shooters - guys like Rick Barry of the Warriors and George (Iceman) Gervin of the Spurs. It granted me entry into circles that most people in my situation would not have been invited.

That allowed me to get to know Mitch a bit better after the homework incidents. We actually began to interact not only inside the classroom, but also in the courtyard where the basketball courts resided. In time, I think he even begrudgingly admitted that I complemented his play well. I was a righty, while he was lefty. I liked to play the point, while Mitch preferred to play the shooting guard. Not too many guys figured this out, but our bread and butter play was for me to drive past my man, forcing the guy guarding Mitch to shift over and cover me, leaving Mitch at the elbow for a nice and clean open shot.

Mitch had this one shot that, for years, would entertain and amaze the masses. EVERYONE knew he was a lefty, and common sense would dictate to anyone playing defense, that you should force him to the right since that was his weak hand. But, everyone let him dribble along the left sideline and let him hoist up his signature shot, a running left handed hook shot from the left corner of the court that he would BANK in off the glass. You saw him do that once, and everyone was thinking, Luck. But after seeing it numerous times, you knew that Mitch practiced this shot and he made it more than fifty percent of the time.

Mitch's father was a schoolyard legend who was All-City at Washington whose name is forever hanging in the gym rafters. Mitch's father was so unlike everyone else's dad because he was born in the States, was educated, and did not work in the service industry. Everyone I knew had fathers who worked in the restaurant business in some capacity. Mitch's dad was an engineer at Chevron, while Mitch's mom was a huge real estate agent in the city, and this particular Lee family was the only one I knew that actually owned a Mercedes Benz, which was (in my view) owned solely by the uber-rich.

So that's why in 1978, the super-bad Mitch and I hung out on Sundays at church. We were part of the church's basketball team and we were the starting backcourt tandem at CUMC (Chinese United Methodist Church) at Stockton and Washington.

C'mon, hold this, Mitch said to me, handing me his camera bag. We were traversing our way