Chris Nguyen doesn't know where he's going to go to college, but he knows it won't be far away.
"My grandparents still live here," the 14-year-old Bishop McGuinness freshman said. "I might stay to take care of them with my cousins. ... If we move, like to far out California or something, it would take forever to come back and check on them."
That's about as far as Chris' plans go -- despite what his parents think. He's a teenager, after all; miscommunication is just part of the playbook.
"He'd like to become a teacher," said his father, Thu Nguyen.
Chris' response? "I don't know where he got that."
"A second choice he has would be to be a dentist," his dad said, "but he doesn't like -- he's really scared of blood, so I'm afraid that second choice wouldn't be a good choice for him."
Chris' take on it? "Maybe he has a plan for me I don't know about."
"He loves writing," Thu Nguyen said. "He loves reading. He loves math. Just about everything in school."
What does Chris like about school? "Honestly, none of it," he said. "I guess -- no, no, none of it."
But there are some things they agree upon completely. The importance of family, for instance. And the need for Chris to lead a normal life.
In the explosion, Chris -- whose mother worked a little more than a block from the Murrah Building -- was burned and cut across his face and body. His jaw was broken, his face torn and his ear drums ruptured.
"I don't remember anything about that day at all," he said. "Once, I remember I woke up (in the hospital), and I played that duck hunt (video) game, where you take the gun and hold it up to the screen. I remember playing that with my two older brothers when I woke up in the hospital. That's the only memory I have."
Even so, the bombing seemed to haunt him as he recovered from the blast and subsequent medical procedures, Thu Nguyen said.
"A lot of times, he'd just wake up and cry and scream and yell nonsense," he said.
Chris doesn't talk about the bombing much. He got curious and read up on it, but it's not a favorite topic. He doesn't like it when people he knows learn of his ties to the bombing.
"I don't tell anyone," he said, "because it's hard to find words, or a place or a time or a reason to come out and say it. ... I don't want to be treated different or anything."
So he recognizes that the bombing was a "crucial moment" in his parents' lives -- but not in his. He survived the bombing, but he is not a bombing survivor.
He's 14 years old, not yet an adult, no longer a child. He's a sane sports fan who plays games on his Playstation 2, sends instant messages to his friends, likes going to the mall and watching movies. He loves his family. He's not sure, but he thinks he might even "like" a certain girl.
Just treat him like everyone else.
"It's not like I did anything special. ... You could die any day of your life," he said. "You're in a car, and you get hit. It's just the same. You never know when your time comes."
