Name: Edward Nguyen
Nicknames: 'Ed', taken wearily with feigned goodnaturedness. Is Thanh Si to his mother, father and older sister.
Age: 30
Birthday: May 15th
Sign: Taurus
Fav. food: Peanut M&Ms, Vietnamese hotpot. Ed is one of those guys who really can't cook for himself and misses his mother's home cooking. Thankfully his mother still provides a lot of home cooking in the form of frozen food. This will prevent Edward from ever getting a wife. When he's not eating his mother's home cooking he's eating Stouffer's microwave meals, which is probably a cry for help.
Hated food: Bananas
Job: Edward is a school counsellor associated with the Meadowview-Hillworth cachement area, a keyworker assigned to a number of children in both schools. They don't get a lot of call to go into Crystal, though they're also zoned for it.
He's on a counselling team that's utilized as a floating resource of behaviour and learning management: as well as one-on-one sessions, he takes children isolated as problems out of the classroom and into group problem-solving sessions. He also functions as career guidance, but his job description is Secondary Education Counsellor.
Hobbies:Youth volunteering: Monday is coaching the community basketball team, Thursday nights is youth group, Saturdays are games. Edward measures his life in community service and styrafoam cups of community center coffee. He lives north of the Meadowview area in a highly urban, low-decile, notoriously rough part of town. He works with kids who often come from troubled, crappy homes, wanted to work specifically with kids who came from troubled, crappy homes -- he does that in his day job, he does that in his night job. It is his job. He'll tell you it's more authentic, that this is where the real education lies. More on that later, take it with a nod and a grain of salt.
His kids, coaching and church group are his life. Any other hobby is a sub-hobby he pokes into tiny gaps. Edward's lost more than one girlfriend who couldn't fit into his "timetable" and was a little disquieted at being a sub-hobby.
Cars: Edward owns a station wagon that runs economically, fits four passengers and basketball gear in the trunk. This is not the car of his secretly feverish dreams. He is curiously drawn to the gas-guzzling 1984 Ferrari Testarossa (garish red, please). One day when he gets over his guilt, his oh but it's a sucky, immature car -- he will get a Ferrari Testarossa, keep it in his garage and drive it once a year. You have to know Edward well to guess this hobby, or at least have accidentally watched 2 Fast 2 Furious with him.
Candy: Edward always has candy in his pocket. He's one of those people who's metabolically unfair and still rail-thin, but he consumes more M&Ms, licorice whips, Milk Duds and Dots than anyone should. He is always seen eating candy. He will quietly, desperately, immaturely eat sugar packets from McDonald's if he's desperate, but his metabolism is one that wakes up in the morning wanting sugar and goes to bed at night wanting sugar despite the fact that he attempts to guiltily hide it and pretend his main love in life is eating five plus a day. We are well aware that 'cars' and 'candy' makes Edward sound like the guy who lures you into his van.
Horrifying shirts: Edward's wardrobe consists of three things: business casual, Hawaiian shirts that can render you blind, and a million tees with inspirational quotes on them. He has such an array of inspirational t-shirts that he rarely repeats a month. Whether it's the "Life is a daring adventure," from Helen Keller (yes, he knows she was a Communist -- thanks
smile ) or Sagan's "Somewhere there is something incredible waiting to be known," he has a syrupy motto for every occasion.
Virtues:Kindsexual -- Edward's orientation is 'kind'. He's devoted. He's family-oriented and empathetic and a lot of the time is irritatingly saintly; he can't bear suffering, cruelty or evil, and he's one of those people more than willing to openly code things as evil. Edward's moral code is a complex manual an inch thick. He's good at being kind as a protector, a son and a colleague. He also has the rare trick of being kind quietly, modestly and unflashily. He's lawful good: his ideas of what's right do pretty much follow what the police will let you do and what the police won't let you do, and he also has the big-brother sensibilities of a Lifetime movie and thinks that cigarettes are a gateway drug to marijuana and marijuana is a gateway drug to swapping blowjobs for crack, but he is an incredibly giving person. He never walks on by. This means he's inclined to stick his nose in as a Good Samaritan, but he never walks on by.
His sense of humour tends towards the faintly dry (surprisingly dry, actually, some people on first glance imagine that Edward might be the kind of guy who goes 'hyuck' like Goofy). His unflappably cheery self is a big brothersona, not Edward at all, a works-in-church-and-school model that he shows to people who he defines as in his care -- this is why his cheer is a little pastede on and done for show. For instance: to show that he is laid back he owns a number of Hawaiian shirts. This does not show that he is laid back so much as it shows that he is someone who owns and will wear Hawaiian shirts. Edward isn't actually the kind of person whose spirit level is set to 'cheery', but he works at it because he thinks it's the best approach.
He's more likely to be quieter and drier alone in the company of a peer adult: boy scout leader on the ice, restrained off.
Del Madre -- Edward takes care of people, especially those he codes as in need or vulnerable. He knows where your socks are. He knows when your birthday is. He will remind other people when your birthday is. He has a maternal protective streak a mile wide; he just naturally assumes the iron-fisted role of Mother in any group he is in. As Mother he is high-energy, high-devotion, high-sympathy, but he's also high-nag. His protective streak really isn't masculine: he's a nurturer, his urge is to feed you soup before it's to fight and destroy your enemies. He will mother you even when you don't want to be mothered and mother you especially if you like being mothered. He'd call himself a 'big brother', but the truth is that the way he does his caring is kind of essentially motherly fussing.
Speak Softly And Carry A Huge Stick -- Edward isn't actually a big talker, and he doesn't mince words. (People who have heard him nag may debate this.) He's gently spoken, does not raise his voice when not on a sideline -- listen to him not raising his voice -- and does not believe in confrontation. A confrontation has to end in someone winning. You can walk away at any time. It's your choice.
It's easy to underestimate Edward. The slightly prissy stick up his butt evolved into a steel spine, though, and he is the person who does not run away. He's more resolute than fearless -- he's flinching when you draw back your fist, but he's there to take it. Whether or not he can take it is another thing again.
Working Hard Or... Working Hard -- just with a limit; when he does work he works his a** off. He is industrious, high-functioning, has a concentration span of a camel loaded up with water. It's just that... when he's high-functioning, he's very very functioning, he can juggle a lot of balls at once and remember fifty-seven things at once and play a delicately sprung balancing act. He is one of nature's multitaskers. His folders are all beautifully labelled, laminated, marked according to days of the week, his phone books are all perfectly highlighted. He will organise himself. He will organise you. He will organise your dog. Except when he will lie in bed for three days with a mild cold.
Flaws:Completely Malleable Upper Lip -- some people are stoic in the face of pain, tiredness, illness and a temperature three degrees above normal. There's only one exception to this rule -- tiredness he will ignore when he's with his kids, pain he'll probably ignore, but the bitching and selfpity will gain a multiplier later -- he does a lot of weary temple-rubbing. His usual cheer dissolves like sugar. He always has a packet of antacids and headache pills. Edward is sorry, but he's been stressed all day and he now has heartburn up to his eyeballs. His approach to work is problematic: he'll sprint through it and work when he's tired and then completely keel over rather than taking things at a steady pace. He does have too much work on his plate, but his pride and own sense of personal responsibility would take too much of a beating for him to lessen it. Also he is not the type of person to take his own overworkedness gracefully.
He will not muscle through anything in this mode. In fact, he'll be checking his temperature every ten seconds and wondering if he has swine flu. In-denial hypochondriac: had a mother more than willing to put him into bed with a stubbed toe.
The Flag Of Freedom Does Not Wave For You -- Edward believes in duty and following orders, not freedom of choice. He is smiley and kind, but when you're told to do something you should do it. Why? Because you were told.
smile The 'unassuming' front is all that, a front, an iron fist inside a snuggly mitten. Independence is good, but what you should be doing, what you really should be doing, is thinking about the other people in your life. Because they come first.
A lot of love and belonging kids love Edward, and so do control kids whom he grants trust and responsibilities in waves -- but freedom-loving choice kids can chafe at him. A lot. Edward thinks there's a 'don't you think you're being selfish?' in team. Edward thinks that he's all about choices, but in reality he's all about the obviously good choice and the obviously bad choice, like a game of Baldur's Gate II. Either you can go to this class and work or you won't, and the consequences are up to you. Either you make the choice to bully or you walk away. It's up to you. He creates a lot of strawmen fallacies.
Self-Pity City, Population Edward -- To know about Edward's selfpity, you first have to examine Edward Nguyen. Second-generation Vietnamese who grew up the only son in a new America, he ran off the rails early due to being a bit of a Peter Pettigrew who desperately needed the sense of belonging that only local ne'er-do-wells could provide. You could say that something in him always needed a gang of people to tell him what to do. You could probably say that he just always needed a gang. In any case, this lasted until he was about seventeen and he was only 'scared straight' by a run-in with the police and the accidental death of another teen in a beatdown: swapping information for the chance to get out, he picked freedom instead of loyalty. He threw himself into school, threw himself into Changing Lives, threw himself kind of pathetically at the side of a caring guidance counsellor whom he was lucky enough to connect to and grew into the Edward Nguyen of today. It took a lot of discarding.
Because of this and for other reasons, Edward neurotically guilts about everything. Instead of feeling bad about himself, he feels sorry about himself -- look, the thing is that as much as Edward likes being kind and wants the world to be a better place and loads his gun with humane lovingkindness, he also likes being kind because he likes telling himself he is a good person. He is obsessed with the fact that Edward Nguyen is a good person who does good things now. It's not so black and white as I AM GOOD, THEREFORE BAD THING I DID MUST = GOOD -- it's more a case of not quite believing that he does do selfish, self-righteous, prissy, morally ambiguous things. He shuts that all away. Because he is a good man. He takes youth group. He stocks his goodness away as carbon credits which mean that any bad things he does don't count.
He's also one of those people who thinks that because he was able to turn his life around, you not lifting yourself up by your bootstraps is a disappointment on your part. A lot of the counselling group cavalierly -- especially with Hillworth -- describe the kids as "damaged goods," ie, no chance for a happy ending. Edward thinks he knows when you are damaged goods.
He can be emotionally distant, a chronic complainer, patronizingly smiley, obsequiously cheerful or alternately exhausted and reluctant, a nagger, irritatingly complacent. He owns nasty Hawaiian shirts. But he takes youth group and lives alone and sends his parents money every week so your complaints are all invalidated.
Moral absolutist, except -- some things are unforgivable. Some things are always immoral. Edward is one of those guys who pretty irritatingly believes in a slippery slope, but more than that believes that no matter what circumstances you're in you should be making the choice to do the right thing anyway and that there's no excuse. This is all irritating because although this is his party line, this is what he goes down on his knees at night desperately praying that due to his circumstances all the other stuff he does is also forgiven. Edward's judgemental, has a moral high elephant and believes too much in Goodness: he's also in practice more kind than he is good, more self-serving than he'd ever like to believe, more obsessed with the idea that he's paid his dues and received a pardon. He says he wants authenticity, but the truth is he gets a contact high from doing stuff that fulfills his saint complex. Self-denial and guilt included.
Nagger -- nag nag nag nag nag nag nag nag. He might grant you trust, but he'll still undermine it by implying you're not going to remember for over a span of twenty-four hours to do something. He's not a classic henpecker: it's more a tiresome iteration of your cellphone reminding you -- you have an appointment. Remember that appointment. Did you remember your appointment? It's something Edward applies mainly, again, to people under his own umbrella.
It's not to say he never nags anyone else. He does. It's a way of looking like you're emotionally connecting because you remember something about a person: it's a pretty cheap way, and it stacks. Girlfriends have discovered this. He can make you feel infantile without bothering to be patronizing.
Reply
