AKA

My Childhood!

Hi! My name is AKA! AKA means 'smile' in Hawaiian and I am told I got that name when I was born just after the first spank and first cry. When the nurse handed me all checked out to my Mother I smiled. Dad says I smiled when he got me too so here I am with a silly but memorable name. People ask me if it stands for 'Also Known As' and I say no but in a way it does.

Of course I'm Hawaiian, one-eighth from my mothers side, but now she is a true blond with the other seven-eighths missionary blood while I have a strawberry blond hair from my father's red hair. Mom met Dad when the Navy sent him to Pearl from his home in New Orleans. They fell in love, got married and soon there was me but in my case it wasn't 'baby makes three.'

It took awhile but Mom figured out Dad had a little something on the side so she threw him out making baby makes two. Dad moved to SiliValley in California where he got a job that paid more than his job in Hawaii (he had left the Navy by then) and an apartment in Menlo Park. I could tell Mother was unhappy but the two of us got on for a year then she sent me to Menlo Park to spend the summer with Dad. I admit Dad was happy to see me and went all out for me. He got me a bicycle and signed me up for a park recreation program every day so I would be OK while he was at work. Every Thursday he had me ask some of the kids I befriended at the park recreation program to a BBQ. Dad insisted on at least two boys and girls to keep things even, not as dates for I was still too young to date, but so I was used to being in mixed company. Dad did his part, every Thursday he brought a different girl friend so the dinner came out even. After my friends left the girl friend stayed so it was odd after all.

Dad was moonlighting fixing up fixer-uppers on which the owners had defaulted their loan. Dad convinced a bank to sell the house to him with no down payment and he would do the repairs. Dad does good work (look at me) and was able to rent them for more than the loan payment he assumed at lower interest rates. His places were not palatial but he decorated them well if modestly. By the time I arrived he was finishing his fourth one and could finance the materials out of his rent on the other three.

Dad did all this by working on them in evenings and on weekends. I helped him for I had nothing else to do but he took Thursday and every other Saturday off. That meant I was dependent on other families for something to do most Saturdays and Sundays or work with Dad. That was why he wanted me to make friends but it turned out well. I did make a lot of friends and I was invited to do things with them, especially the girls. Dad made me write a thank you letter every time I was invited by someone.

Every other Saturday we went surfing. From Pacifica to Big Sur there is good surfing along the coast that is only a 30 to 60 minute drive away. I learned to surf before I can remember. Surfing is what made Dad want to stay in Hawaii and it is what introduced Mom to him so here I am, a surfing wahini! Mom is the best surfer, being a native and all, but Dad does very well, being a man and all. I am improving all the time and even give surf lessons to cousins and friends who visit from Naw-leens.

When we went surfing I was able to bring a friend (Dad did too) so I had a good time (Dad did too). Dad even found a foreclosed house within walking distance of the beach in Santa Cruz and started working on it. This was too far to drive after work so we slept in sleeping bags in the back yard and worked on the house and surf in the morning. I still made friends at the park to bring home for BBQ on Thursday but the other nights I helped him.

I returned to Hawaii when school started and Dad stayed behind with his girlfriends. I took my own little black book made up of names, addresses and email addresses of the kids I met that summer. Dad told me to send them all emails and a Christmas Card every year to keep in touch. I did that and still have many of them on my list of people I correspond with.

I could tell Mom was disappointed Dad didn't come home with me but she was happy to see me and we had a lot of fun. School was fun, I was a year older and it was a good fall for surfing. Mom and I seemed closer that fall than before. I didn't feel sorry for her, not that the separation was really her fault, but she seemed happy if a little lonely so I just let things take their course and hoped for the best.

Dad did come home for Christmas though he only stayed a little while and slept on the couch. After returning to SiliValley he returned in a month and stayed, this time in Mom's bed. The reunion caused a great number of parties by friends and relatives so that year was one of the best of my life.

Dad continued refurbishing abused houses for banks when he returned to Honolulu. He explained that the tax laws made it better to keep the houses in California for at least five years so he had someone manage rentals for him there. He found a bank in Honolulu that would let him take over payments and used the money from California to pay for the refurbishment. There are a lot of rundown houses in Honolulu so he was busy most nights and like before, all weekends except every other Saturday.

This bothered Mom for she couldn't tell if he was fooling around or not. I stayed out of it and spent my time surfing after school and on weekends. It couldn't last though and Mom threw Dad out again. Again Dad moved to SiliValley, this time in Mountain View and again I went to visit him for the summer. I found Dad was not living alone but with a woman. She was Dad's age, built like the proverbial brick out house and was a very strong woman. Her name was Cathy and she worked for a Semiconductor company as manager of MarCom.

She took an interest in me after she learned I had a number of friends from my previous visit so she didn't have to baby-sit me. She and Dad put on a party for my friends at the Rec. Center of the apartment building. Most of my friends showed up and we all had a good time. Dad and Cathy also invited the kids of co-workers who lived near or in Mountain View so it was a very mixed up party but a great one.

My friends and I were able to get around on bicycles, using busses or having some adult drive us. Dad's idea of keeping an even number of boys and girls paid off for I found several had become couples. I could have kids over to use the apartment house pool although there was a limit on the number in the pool at the same time. The rest of us stayed in the Rec. Center and played computer games or talked. I had a group over every week and other friends had people over to their homes so soon my Mountain View friends and my Menlo Park friends intermingled.

Every Saturday afternoon Cathy and Dad would each drive three kids down to Santa Cruz. Dad was back moonlighting on refurbishing houses leaving Cathy and I home alone most evenings and Saturday Dad and I would spend working on a house. Dad still owned the Santa Cruz beach house and rented it to a friend of his. He kept our boards there in the shed.

Cathy insisted on going to Santa Cruz nearly every Sunday, and, as it seldom rains in the summer, we slept in sleeping bags in the back yard Saturday night then awoke at dawn to carry our boards to the beach and surf. Cathy showed up at about nine with egg sandwiches (she surfed for attention from boys and not in the water) then we sat on the beach or drove to see things or shop in the area. We always had lunch on the beach and usually went swimming. Cathy is something else in a swimming suit. She only wears bikinis and always overflows them. I can understand why Dad lived with her; she has a great bod!

She also was very nice. Cathy had a vicious sense of humor but never pointed it at people she was with; always people we didn't even know. When I asked her a question she took it seriously even if it wasn't. I had my period last year and she was helpful when I had problems. I could ask her any question and usually asked dillies.

I had taken sex education in school but they didn't tell me as much as I expected and it was very clinical. Cathy was not clinical at all, she could make a longshoreman blush! She never told me she couldn't talk about that or that I should wait until later. I asked her a lot about men, thinking I have the girl-things pretty well understood. She told me all about men and particularly about her marriage when she was still in college. It lasted about ten years and fell apart because she was the one who fooled around.

She told me all about being in love. "I thought I was in love before but when I met a stock broker at a party who was two years older than me it was almost instant love. He was a fun guy and we were soon a couple. I had a key to his apartment . . . he didn't have one for mine but girls shouldn't give keys out. You never know who will come to visit and when. Anyway, one day I unlocked the door and quickly found he was in bed with this Swedish bimbo who was pretty and a lot of fun but she didn't have much else. I left his key and never went back. It really hurt. I thought I'd die but I didn't."

She told me about her husband. "He was quiet but very intense, sort of smoldering. At parties he would talk mostly to men and seldom told jokes but he helped keep parties going no matter what size. Our big problem was he became more serious. He bought a luxury car we couldn't afford to impress the people at work even though they all knew pretty much how much money he earned. He was always pleasing someone in his company and used me to help. I don't mind that but he had delusions of grandeur. He wasn't rising as fast as he wanted. He's done OK considering but nowhere as well as he wanted. I couldn't stand the disappointments and the failures to impress someone.

"I found a guy who was really moving up but that didn't work out. He did show me that I was no longer in love with my husband so I divorced him and he now thanks me for that."

I asked her about something on TV and she said it was a sexual position. She has a book of them and showed it to me. We laughed at the funny names and sometimes painful-looking knots people were tied in.

About mid summer I asked her about going all the way and she told me exactly what to do. "See a Doctor. Get birth control pills and prophylactics. Be sure you're clean and he is to. Also, I suggest you both be perfectly sober."

We also talked about careers, clothing, other women, men, how to advance in a corporation and computers.

I know a lot about computers and Cathy knows very little. But here were new things for me. "There are three things to do in a corporation; know something better than the others, be helpful and never stand around watching others do it, and have people leave you having gotten what they wanted or knowing how to get it.

"A lot of this, maybe 90%, can be done verbally and a lot more of it can be done using the web. But the most difficult problems are problems people have with operating systems and how to use all the functions of Word and Excel. I know nothing about that. I'm in the word business so I know Word with a capital pretty well. People come to me for help and I'm never too busy to at least give them a book to look at but I try to show them how to do it too."

Dad loaded Word and Excel on my laptop and gave me manuals for both. I spent a lot of time studying them and doing documents and spread sheets for Cathy as learning exercises. Cathy took me to buy thong underwear for all of this help so I learned two things, more about computers and how to get rid of VPL, visible panty line.

Cathy knew when I was going to lose my virginity, I don't know how, but she was up when I came home to talk to me over hot chocolate. She let me tell my story and strangely I was not embarrassed. Then she asked a few questions, told me not to have sex for a week or so and to look for signs of problems then go to the Doctor if they occurred.

I didn't have sex until after I returned home for the guy I did it with turned out to be a jerk. I crossed him off my expanding mailing list leaving me with plenty of friends and plenty of them were guys. I had met a lot of surfers in Santa Cruz and other beaches so with my Menlo Park, Mountain View and beach friends my list had about a hundred and fifty names on it when I got home.

Mom was terribly upset about my having sex and threatened to call Dad but I begged her not to. I guess what really upset her was that she had not been there to help me (what help did I need?) and that Dad was unaware of any of it. What really set her off was that I got advise from that woman!

I calmed Mom down and we got on with our lives, at least until Mom's boyfriend was there for breakfast. I would have blackmailed her if I wasn't so frightened Dad would find out. Now Mom calmed me down, said Dad would come home in due time and asked that I not tell Dad. "Men are different than women as they think there is a difference between sauce for the goose and sauce for the gander."

Mom was right on both counts. Dad did return home to us but things were permanently changed. He promised not to stray again, the latter word applying both to 'promise' and 'stray.' I can't prove anything but I'm certain he strayed. Mom also strayed. So did I!

Dad again refurbed houses in Honolulu but this time he hired men to help him and spent his full time on it. He told Mom he was now making nearly as much as he did in SiliValley and wanted to have his life back. He also went to night school to get his realtor's and appraiser's license. Both of these required he work for a realtor and an appraiser for a year. Dad began to sell his houses in California to reduce costs of maintaining them across an ocean and used the huge amounts of money to buy vacation homes in Hawaii then he started his own real estate office to rent properties to vacationers, including his own. Dad did keep his promise to me to hold on to the Santa Cruz house and when the current renter left he intended to rent it to vacationers so we could use it more often.

It was hard to tell if he made her do it or if it was her idea but soon Mom was working on her travel agent's license because Dad's home-refurb business was creating an opportunity for travel agents. Dad talked me into taking a class in mortgage brokering that was the same night as Mom's class. I was teaching surfing to the renters of his properties who wanted that service. He created a family business but only Dad had the keys to homes under refurb or between rentals so only he had places to tryst! And I was the one who needed a place to take guys.

Of all things, Cathy came to visit us in Hawaii and yes, she stayed with us at our house. I admired Mom for tolerating her and not getting snippy with her. Cathy would come for Christmas or just for a week of vacation. Dad seemed to stay away from her in the sexual sense but he was nice to her and gave no indication of any hanky panky. Of course, she was my best adult friend and I took her around Honolulu and to see all of Oahu. On one of her trips she met a guy and extended her vacation to stay on another island.

Cathy told me she was staying with another man. She was both in love and in lust. He didn't make as much money as she did but he was an outdoors guy, skiing, rock climbing, scuba and camping. Cathy did none of those things but would go with him if camping weren't involved. She let him go on a ski trip while she came to Hawaii. It seemed to work for her. Since she went with guys to other islands she seemed to have the sleeping-around bug though.

I did well in high school despite spending a lot of time surfing. I was active in the Computer Club and the Dance Club but most of my time after school was at the beach with a lot of the guys from my school. My surfing improved because I did it so much. There was another reason too. I went up to the north shore with friends to camp out for the weekend. North shore has the best waves in winter when the storms are in the arctic and the wind drives the storm waves south onto the north shore. It was too rough for us the first day so we watched the Pros take the waves and I became friends with several of them. They invited us to a party that night and I was well banged by one of them. The next day the waves were smaller but we still didn�t want to try them. The Pro who banged me literally threw myself and my board in and he made me paddle to the line up and take a wave. He said one was small and I should go but when I did it lifted me so fast my stomach was six feet under the water. I didn�t dare stand up and rode the wave on my belly. My Pro got me out again and convinced me to stand up and I did. I crashed before the end and I was mauled by the wave but it was so great I wanted to go back. He gave me some tips and I managed to stay up. I got lessons from the Pros all day while my friends sat waxing their boards and soon I was beating the waves. He came with his buddies to surf the southern shore after school some times so I got more lessons that helped me improve my surfing and he made me into a really great lay! I added the Pro surfers to my email list.

Dad became so busy he rented an office, hired a girl to answer the phone and handle clients. Her name was Cindy and she was like me, pretty but not stunning. Cindy was just a couple of years older than me and I didn't like her because she was a threat to become Daddy's bimbo. Then Dad made me teach her Word, Excel and how to use the web. As I expected, she wasn't too bright but she managed to learn those things she had to do but I ended up setting up the forms and macros. I did the training after school so I was there as the pumpkin turned into a Cadillac.

Cindy slowly used her salary while still living at home to buy new clothes, get better perms and soon she was knocking any guy who came through the door out of his socks. I don't know how Dad picks them but this one was perfect; dumb, beautiful, willing and sitting in an office with a couch and a lock on the door. The only problem was she had to go to the airport to pick up renters and take them to their auto rental while Dad worked all day refurbing, had to be home for dinner so they couldn't do it on the couch, much.

Mom wasn't sitting home waiting. She didn't play around but she would find one guy and let him bounce her bones until one of them tired of the other then she would find another guy. Almost all of them were Navy men. She loved the uniform and by now was adept at removing it in the dark.

Dad built Mom her dream home on the south shore just east of Honolulu but they gave me a car to drive and left me in the same High School. I concentrated on school after which I went surfing every afternoon. I followed the Wahini Rule: 'A board under your arm or a boy under your legs!' There were plenty of boys and boards. I was a lucky girl.

I finally graduated and headed to college in Southern California. I had a long list of friends, over two hundred with my high school and neighborhood friends and I emailed them all about my going to Southern California. Those who lived or were going to school there answered me so I discovered I knew a lot of people when I started college.

I wrote software to assign a number to each name and build a relational data base so I could find people by categories such as where I met them, what region they lived in, hobbies and any of the information in the data base. I could go anywhere in Hawaii or California and find people I knew then let them know where I lived. Dad was right. It makes things easier to know a lot of people and be able to contact them.

I was glad to get away from the intrigues of Mom and Dad but don't get me wrong. I understand them and their oddities only made me love them more. Both Dad and Mom worry they are teaching me the wrong ideas about a lot of things but I can't complain that my parents don�t understanding me or that they have ever short changed me in any way. I know they love each other so obviously love is not enough to make marriage easy. I know I'll make mistakes but I will understand that no one is perfect and not make rash decisions. No one knows better than I that life is what you make it.

At college I lived in a rooming house with both boys and girls. The guys were almost all nerds and so were most of the girls but there were some neat girls living there and even a couple of surfers. Some of the guys spent most of their time on computers and those were the guys I hung out with. The California computer nerds, and remember I am a nerd, are head and shoulders above the Hawaiian nerds. I stayed away from hacking but learned a lot about creating software and web sites.

Dad sold my car in Hawaii but bought me a sweet car with a sunroof, sexy styling and cherry paint but not too much power or gas guzzling. I could take boards on the roof and three maybe four people to the beach. Using my eMail list I kept in touch with surfing friends and found the best conditions on the web so we often got together.

For those four years I didn't meet many people from college except from my rooming house or classes and a few people on my contact list. I met a lot more at the beach, surfers and non-surfers. I had a great social life, lots of parties and lots of fun.

On school vacations I never went to the big beach parties like Florida or Cancun. I went home for Christmas and went to work in SiliValley for summers. Going to Hawaii in the summer is not a favorite of residents for that is when the most tourists are there. For the other holidays I went with my Southern California buddies to different places such as Coalingua and Nawleens. I took them to Dad's Santa Cruz place to surf and party there and even to Cathy's place when she was away and sometimes even when she was there. With Cathy's bod she could always find a bed. I took some friends home to Honolulu with me for Christmas and even Easter. Sometimes we just went by ourselves and slept somewhere as long as we could surf.

One of our trips was to Half Moon Bay. We went there several times, the first time during The Surf Contest held every winter at Mavericks, located one-half mile off the coast of Half Moon Bay. With waves that have crested at over 50 feet, remarkably strong currents, dangerously jagged rocks, shallow reefs, and frigid water temperatures many believe this to be the most challenging surf contest in the world. The really amazing story is that Jeff Clark became the first person to ever surf Mavericks in 1975 and he surfed there alone for the next 15 years, as no one else dared to tackle those big waves.

I said I learned a lot about software my first year at college and I wouldn't be my father's daughter if I did not add 2+3 together and get 25! I was still brokering Dad's mortgages so I decided to build a web site to sell mortgage refinancing and tested it while I contacted mortgage funds to get them to sign up for my service. I used my limited savings to buy advertising for my web site and sat back. The first week I got more support problems than I can handle but I sold enough mortgages to hire my favorite computer nerd to handle them.

Mine was not the largest such site on the web but it got a reputation for being easy to use so word of mouth built it up and I added more advertising to spread the word giving me leveraged growth, every new customer got me an average of 1.73 additional new customers. It wasn't long I was making enough money to pay for my college so I did. I thought of getting a sexy new car but decided it would just be vandalized if it wasn't stolen so I saved my money. I found a condo in SiliValley with a foreclosed mortgage and I had Dad get it for me. Dad brought Mom to fix it up so they could take a summer vacation and I helped.

Mom, Dad and I were staying with Cathy and her boyfriend (I got the couch, ouch)! The three of us worked every day except weekends when we went surfing. One weekend we took off to go to Half Moon Bay. The waves are not as good as in the winter but they are fun. We surfed and stayed in the back yard of a friend of a friend and remained for the Sunday afterwards to attend the Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society for Jazz. Why 'Bach?' Well for Johann Sebastian Bach's music! Actually they play all types of music. The name arose out of an informal party when a small group of friends were hanging out on a Sunday afternoon in a former beer joint on the ocean. While drinking and listening to recorded music, some other people came with some dynamite and suggested everyone go out and explode it on the beach. Declining their offer, the dynamiters left and someone put on a recording of the Bach�s Brandenberg Concerti. They were swing dancing to Bach, when they heard an explosion on the beach. An inebriated guest named the group the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society.

We finished my Condo and Cathy found a renter for it during the school year, a school teacher and her husband who spent summers traveling. They were responsible people and had references of places they had rented before.

The next two summers Cathy helped me get a job in a high tech company she thought I should work for when I graduated. I saw a lot of Cathy between surf weekends, holidays and summer jobs. Mom was more upset than ever and once even claimed Cathy was 'stealing' me.

The web site took a lot of time every day of the week making it tough to study sometimes let alone go away for a week. I was more and more dependent on having web access.

My love life was the same as it was in High School; it was a series of one-night stands interspersed with one week stands. Looking back, I can see that I was addicted to the thrill of fast affairs then out.

I actually lived with one guy for a month. He had a condo in Redondo Beach and it was perfect for me; up for Dawn Patrol, head for class at 10 then home in the afternoon for sun and surfing, study at night then screw most sleep time away. We both knew it would not last but basically the sex was great so it was easier to live out of half a dresser than go home. After a month it began to get dull. I went off for a weekend with a professional volley ball player and that was it.

All good things came to an end when the faculty drug me kicking and screaming to the stage to give me a diploma with Mom, Dad, Cathy and her boyfriend in the audience. I sold my web site for seven figures and could do whatever I wanted. I invested the money in a variety of ways and leveraged it when I could. I did squander some of the money to buy a lot on the north shore and convinced Dad to build me a house there. When I say it�s on the shore it really is. At least it is within a short walk to the beach. My property line is shared by a Hawaiian State Park!

Cathy helped me find a job that I needed because I spent all my money. After working two summers in SiliValley I had an idea of companies I wanted to work for. A lot of my contact list was involved with SiliValley and several companies invited me to visit them but one flew a manager to see me in SoCal. They wanted to start an eBusiness web site.

Like most SiliValley companies they have a lot of things they give to employees and customers such as T-shirts, coffee mugs etc. with the company name and logo. (Cathy and I can sleep forever in T-shirts with National, KLA, Amdahl, Apple and a host of companies that didn't last five years). They have more expensive things with logos they award to employees such as expensive pens and pencils, carry-on luggage etc. Marketing has awards for customers who are helpful in the sales process and these things range from luggage to golf carts as well as gimmees such as tennis balls and golf tees.

Administration is poor and they have Marketing claiming managers undermine the value of customer gifts by giving them to employees, too many free things going out and unhappy employees who never get anything. They want a web site to handle it. All of their customers and employees have Internet access, a company can be paid to inventory and ship the items and the software can enforce the rules.

The job is perfect for me. I told them what I did with my site and that I did all the coding myself. They were impressed with that but mostly that I provided support myself. I detected they really wanted me so I called Dad and Cathy for tips on negotiating. Together we drew up a list of demands.

"You were the CEO of your company and you successfully sold it for a good price. Don�t get locked into a low starting salary, " said Dad.

"Get all the perks you can," said Cathy. "Decide what laptop you want and get all the software you can imagine on it after learning what they use. Get a cell phone with them paying the bill and anything else you can think of."

I got that plus I threw in the right to work at home in Hawaii. They saved the cost of an office and a parking space and it wouldn�t hurt them at all as my Web designers are in New York City, my software developers are in Atlanta, the contractors for doing testing are in the LA area and my marketing consultants live in Salt Lake City and Sturgeon Bay. They were so anxious to get me to sign that they agreed to it all. Dad was happy but wondered if they would have given me a car.

I�ll live in my Condo for a year to get everything kicked off. We had to get a list of requirements, do market research on format, write software, hire support guys and test it all before rolling it out. Then I�ll move to my place in Hawaii and run things by eMail and phone.

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Pukanala's Story Pukanala is my Mom.

Last Updated 12/7/04

AKA

My Childhood!

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