Lesson, Lesson

Brian has a problem with the way I win when we play Settlers of Catan. I posited that Brian just has a problem with me winning at a game instead of him, but neither of us actually believed that. No, Brian just objects to the way I win when I win. It is, he says, anticlimactic, and that is unacceptable.

It started like this.

One night despite knowing that I had normal adult responsibilities, like waking up, showering, working eight hours and earning money, I decided to stay awake far too late to play a game that ended up making everyone upset. This scenario has more than one problem, the least of which being that I was behaving like an irresponsible ten year old. The single most acceptable moment to me was when I thought, "I have work at seven thirty, which in turn means I'll be getting up at six thirty, which in turn means that even if I left right now, I'll only get six hours of sleep." And then at the end of that thinking, "Eh. I'll be fine─all historical evidence to the contrary aside─and I'll keep playing this game even though our party of eight is now a party of three and I'll very likely lose and get upset."

I did not lose. Not only did I not lose, I won three out of the four times we played but got upset anyway. And not for some easily understandable reason like I was winning and someone almost stole my win from me. In fact, in all three games I was a clear leader and I just didn't notice. I didn't even notice when I won and then two rounds later on in someone else's turn I thought, "Oh. I think I was supposed to win that last time . . . maybe I should say something." Then another turn went by because I was torn between feeling the need to announce that I won two turns ago and just didn't realize it until now and not wanting to sound all like, "Hahaha suckers! You've been trying to win for ten whole minutes and your efforts were futile! Futile as a snake trying to fly! Only more so because Disney actually made that one happen in that animal movie." 

But after yet another turn has passed and it's getting close to being my turn again, I won't want to deal with the conundrum of how to actually deal with my turn when it comes. What would I do? Take my turn first? Trade some more resources? Actually contribute to the perpetuation of others believing they can still win? Announce it as soon as it's my turn? What if Brian scores just enough points to win on his turn and then I have to come out and say, "Uh, actually, I think I won two rounds ago. . . ." That would just be embarrassing and make me look like a jerk who likes to one-up her husband just when it looks like he's about to dominate at yet another game.

I should have just been mildly impressed that all this went through my head in five seconds. Or even more impressed that Brian's sister finished her turn in record time. But mostly I let the anxiety of announcing my win build up until it's like that moment when you know you've swung as high as you can on the swing set and it's now or never if you want to jump off because any moment longer will ruin your swing time for ever. 

"Er. I think I won already." I tried to mumble the response mostly because I didn't want people there (who are all in-laws and such) to think I'm being triumphant at their expense. Not only that, but I was legitimately still checking to see if I did win and now that I'd announced it I didn't want to be wrong. So I sat through the moment of the boys all separately counting my points and arriving simultaneously to the confirmation that five of us can all count correctly to ten. 

The first time this happened I was taken very much by surprise. I hadn't counted my points almost all game and had only turned my mind to it because I saw Brian counting his. It sounds infantile, but very often I only think to do things because Brian is doing them. Activities in this category most often include "eating a meal," "drinking because I'm actually thirsty," and "putting on clothes for the day." But the habit of using Brian as a cue to participate in normal behavior has grown into more of a dependency and this time it clued me in to the fact that we were playing to a finite point and perhaps I should gauge my progress against that goal.

The first time, everyone more or less brushed it off. It was a practice round and we were playing mostly to introduce the game to six of the eight players. So it wasn't really a big deal that I hadn't noticed because this was also only the third time I had ever played. Despite these mitigating circumstances, Brian loudly commented that that victory was the most anticlimactic ending to a game he'd ever seen and then looked at me as though he were wondering how any normal person could mess this up. He does this regularly even though he knows I'm not normal.

The second game ended very similarly to the first except that everyone's responses escalated in exasperation and I was given several looks that clearly said, "Look, knucklehead. Some of us take this very seriously and your disregard for keeping track of your score and then announcing a victory anticlimactically is so not cool. Get with it." This made me squirm in my chair a little bit and certainly negated any victorious feelings that may have attempted to rise on account of winning a second time. 

This happening twice in a row also established a pattern of behavior and instigated commentary in the third game from every other participant taking the opportunity to remind me to count my points every five minutes. Naturally I didn't respond well to the heckling and quietly lost the third game as Brian swooped in with a dramatic move and took the win like a shiny champion with stars bursting out of his face and doves flying in a V behind him while medieval trumpeters blasted a victory march. Nobody gave him any crap for that, though, because at least he dominated climatically like Achilles (or rather like Achilles before anyone knew he could die from a shot to the foot like a pansy).

For many reasons, the night should have ended then. But as previously mentioned, I'm irresponsible, and it stands to reason that so is my husband and certainly his little sister can't be faulted because, hey, we're the adults in the room. So with great anticipation and a certain inclination to believe that Brian's little sister would clinch this last game, we launched into a fourth round, now with only the three of us playing. 

I was intensely focused on this round, and determined not to win anticlimactically. In fact, I was certain I would lose, since both Brian and his sister were playing very antagonistically against me. Very antagonistically. I may need to discuss how antagonistically another time. I was so focused that when Brian threw in his cards (quite literally) and frustratingly said, "Maile! You won again! Pay attention!" I denied it! I was keeping track! I had built only a single city and had all five houses stretched out intermittently along the coastline. I had been forced to build in very unprofitable locations because of the aforementioned antagonism.

I had furthermore been forced to play several knight cards to remove the thief from his standing residence on my fields. This, while giving me the two points for "largest army," had not been helpful up to this point since both the other players had regularly been rolling sevens and had reinstated the thief somewhere in my territory as soon as I had moved him. By my count, therefore, I had only nine points, a score, I might add, that Brian and his sister had had for several turns now. 

I loudly tried to point out to Brian that my addition skills were not in question here, but he overruled by tossing the "longest road" card into my pile. This confused me, and Brian seized the moment to vocally add up my point count to an obvious eleven, clearly more than enough to claim victory. Brian's sister slumped dramatically in her chair, the picture of pitiable loss. With his Sgt. Johnson face on, Brian took me by the shoulders and ordered me! to STOP WINNING ANTICLIMACTICALLY!

Lesson learned: I'm hiring medieval trumpeters.

Challenges

For a while my best friend, Genna, issued me writing challenges to help keep me awake when I was working graveyards. The challenges were simple enough to begin with, but Genna got quite devious with them. I am still working on one that she issued three years ago. But I thought these were worth sharing.

Challenge: Write me an email (at least 4 lines long) without using the letter T on the topic of turtles.

You've asked for four lines on a Chelonian superorder crown group member. Biologically a member of such a class defies ordinary need for hired defense. Each successfully born and developed grown male and female carries a nearly impervious wrapper capable of shielding a living organism from undesired physically dangerous brushes. A Darwinian approach would perhaps label such a species as remarkable and well made in surviving perceived known or unknown arduousness in life. My belief is one of classic head nod. Such an animal is indeed very special, however by no random chance - by will and superior knowledge of our one and only superior God. Who else would encase an overgrown snail in an impermeable overgrown skull?

Challenge: A poem written about Charles Darwin's exploration of the Galapagos Islands. Written in haiku.

HMS Beagle
Finding Creation's center
In a tortoise shell

Challenge:  So, first, think of the alphabet. then assign a number to each letter. A=1, B=2 and so on. Your assignment is to think of 26 words, one starting with each letter of the alphabet. Easy enough, but here's the challenge. The number of letters in the word has to correspond with the number assigned to each letter. So the A word will have 1 letter. The B word will have 2, C word will have 3 and so on. 

I am more than willing to field any questions that may arise from this list. Almost all of them have their own listing in the OED and the rest are legitimate constructions based on the immutable laws of the English language.

a
by
cat
drum
eagle
fester
gestate
highland
ingenious
jaguarondi
katavothron
labyrinthine
misconjugated
nasopharyngeal
oxyphenbutazone
penitentiaryship
quadringentennial
radioimmunological
schematologetically
tetrahydrocannabinol
undistinguishableness
vernacularizationology

weltanschauungenologist

xenotransplantationology

yogibogeyboxicologistical

zeugmatographicologistical

911

Dear Members of the Public at Large,

The following are not legitimate reasons for calling 911. Not only should these situations be obvious non-emergencies, but in the time it takes for you to decide to call 911, you should realize that your decision is incorrect. 

"911. What is the address of your emergency?"
"This isn't a real emergency" (HINT: Then don't call 911.) "but I need to make a complaint about one of your officers."

NOTE: If your complaint involves the officer in the current act of committing a felony, then please, heaven, yes! call 911! If your complaint involves the officer in question "driving too fast" when you saw him an hour ago while you were coming home from grocery shopping, then please, pause, reflect, and look up our non-emergency phone number. Not only will we gladly answer your call, but we can get you talking with a responsible person who will also gladly converse with you about your concerns.

"911. What is the address of your emergency?"
"This isn't a real emergency" (HINT: Then don't call 911.) "I just need to get in touch with the fire department."

NOTE: What you're looking for is Google. Pull up a web browser, type "phone number for fire department," scan the results for your city's phone number, and don't call 911.

"911. What is the address of your emergency?"
"There's no emergency" (HINT: Then don't call 911.) "I'm just trying to get a hold of the police in X city."

NOTE: What you're looking for is Google. Pull up a web browser, type "phone number for police department in X city," scan the results for your city's phone number, and don't call 911.

"911. What is the address of your emergency?"
"Hi. Yes. I need to talk to your chief."
"Do you need emergency services?"
"No." (HINT: Then don't call 911.) "I just need to talk to your chief."

NOTE: Our chief is great and willingly talks to members of the public that would drive me nuts. But I have yet to see the emergency situation that is handled only by our chief. After normal working hours. On a weekend. Think about what time it is when you decide that you simply must speak with the chief and only the chief and then call our non-emergency number.

"911. What is the address of your emergency?"
"I need the number for the water department."
"Do you need emergency services?"
"No." (HINT: Then don't call 911.) 

NOTE: What you're looking for is Google. Pull up a web browser, type "phone number for water department," scan the results for your city's phone number, and don't call 911.

You may have noticed a bit of a running theme. First of all, if you don't need emergency services (i.e., fire engines rushing to your house, ambulances, or police with lots of guns) then you should not be calling 911.

Secondly, Google is your friend. 911 is not Google. We are not a phone book, a switchboard service, or Google. Google has the information to almost everything. Google does not provide emergency services. 911 provides emergency services. Emergency? 911. Information? Google.

Please grasp this simple difference, dear Public, and all of our lives will be better.

Yours in earnest, 

911 dispatcher

The Fear, The Editor, and The Problem

When I announced that I had started a blog, one of the first things I mentioned was that it had been an impetuous idea and I had acted upon it. I am, at times, impulsive, though I exert a great amount of effort not to cross the line into recklessness. The impulsiveness of such a decision is never a problem at the time; it becomes a problem now. Because now is when I absolutely have to write something new or post nothing at all. This is known as The Fear.

The Fear is the reason most people do not take great leaps of change in order to accomplish something they may have always wanted to do. I've never known anyone who didn't know what The Fear was, but just in case you're one of those lucky few, there's the definition.

The Fear can be one of the great motivating forces in the creative process as it plays off the dread of an impending deadline. The weight of time and inexorable consequences press heavier and heavier until, in a miraculous burst, one accomplishes the necessary either just in the nick of time or shortly after the deadline has passed. I personally know several people who rely on the infallibility of The Fear to get anything done at all. However, for me, The Fear is overshadowed by one greater force: The Problem.

The Problem for me takes a very simple form of an individual residing in my brain (not in the schizophrenic way) called The Editor. One may be tempted to think I could have condensed The Problem and The Editor into one and the same and thereby saved the reader from overexposure to excessive capitalization, but this is not the case.

The Editor is a remarkable part of my brain that I rely on more than almost anything. She is constantly active: the first to rise; the last to rest. When I walk into the grocery store and see a banner printing "partner's in the community" in giant letters, she is the one who fully arrests my pace to effect a face-palm while Brian tugs on my arm to get me out of traffic. When we watch a movie, she is the one incessantly critiquing the plotholes, ineffective character buildup, and sloppy emotional resolution. She is the reason I hate Comic Sans and the reason I post in a serif font. The Editor is relentless, and that is never a problem until it comes to my own writing.

Because I am aware of the issues that plague most stories, essays, movies, books, or basic conversations (yes, conversations can be and are often plagued by issues), I am under extraordinary pressure to create something free from the common mistakes. The Editor reminds me of this expectation every moment of the composition. Were she to be an actual person, Brian would shoot her on sight. As it is, I think he wishes he could surgically remove her from my brain. But he can't. And so she edits on.

Every sentence I write is reviewed a minimum of three times by The Editor before it makes in on the page. Once down, she reads it a further two times before I am allowed to continue on to the next sentence. A mathematically inclined person may at this point want to calculate the essay in its entirety. If you are such a person, let me know what numerical value you find when you finish. Even when I move on to the next sentence, that is not the end of the revision. The Editor must reread the sentence to evaluate its harmony with the sentences nearby. Do the thoughts flow smoothly from one full stop to the next? Is the parallel structure of the ideas maintained without being distracting? How jarring are the paragraph breaks? Are those too frequent? Are those too infrequent? Is there a chance I could be losing the reader by this point? This revision takes a minimum of four reads.

Those are just the broad sweeping questions that every sentence must pass before The Editor allows it to remain in the essay. Each word is further critiqued to assess its value and relative location in the piece. Has the word been used within the last seven sentences? Would another word better capture the meaning? or better paint the picture? What other meanings could a reader mistakenly draw from my use of this verb? Does this adjective really add to the piece or is it just cluttering up the essay? Why am I using such a common noun when there exist better, more descriptive and exquisite ones to be employed? How prolific are the prepositions? A word-focused read only takes about two passes, since words are like the large chunks of food that make up a stew. If there is a clove of garlic in your pot when there should be a potato, it is an obvious and simple thing to rectify.

This does not even include the mechanical edit. In the fifth paragraph second sentence, does the punctuation distract the reader? Ought the phrases to have been split into free-standing sentences? Is there consistent subject-verb agreement? Have I switched tenses? One entire read is dedicated solely to comma evaluation. Another for spelling. What am I supposed to do about the word "plothole"? A seven-minute excursion to consult three dictionaries and Wikipedia reveal that neither "plothole" nor "plot hole" appear in any dictionary and Wikipedia lists "plot hole" first and "plothole" as the "or" spelling. Traditionally an editor will choose to use the first listed spelling as that generally reflects mainstream usage. But The Editor knows that "plothole" is in meaning tightly tied to the word "pothole" and should therefore be treated as a single word and not separated. She chooses to leave "plotholes" in paragraph five at the expense of having to see the red squiggly underlining appear now six times because Google does not recognize "plothole" as a word. Oh. Now seven red squiggly underlines.

I will never be able to fully articulate everything The Editor does as I write. The primary reason being that by the very act of trying to write what she is doing, I am compounding on her activity because she simply must edit everything I'm writing. There comes a point when The Editor is a problem, and today I am awarding her the title of The Problem.

By starting a blog, I dedicated myself to writing at minimum an essay a week. This may even increase to twice a week because lately I've had a creative spurt and want to post more. One problem is that The Editor, by nature of what she does, requires more time than I allow to ensure that an essay is passing her guidelines before I post it. And an essay that is imperfect irritates her like a sharp rock in one's shoe when one is running a marathon. It's worse than that because any runner would immediately stop to remove the rock, but an imperfect essay is not so simple. If it were left to The Editor, I would only post near-perfect pieces. I do not have time to make every piece near-perfect. And in fact, I doubt any one of my (very few) readers is expecting near-perfection. This is The Problem. The Problem is that The Editor cannot accept that things do not need to be even half-perfect.

This week in preparation for posting today, I wrote the beginning paragraphs to nine separate essays. Each one, one after the other, was set aside because "it wasn't going where I wanted it to go," "I didn't have a well-formed ending," "the middle was wandering too much," "the idea isn't quite right," or the all-encompassing "there's something wrong with it just now, and I'm not sure how to fix it yet." After setting aside nine new ideas, I reviewed four half-worked essays. Each was closed for similar reasons and put aside. Following a review of over a dozen other ideas that I have noted in various places, I went to the pool with a notebook and came up with five more ideas. These each made it about two sentences before The Editor chose to set them aside with the others. This is The Problem.

Brian has a solution for The Problem. Brian is a Marine. Brian has a Marine's solution to a writer's problem. Would you like to know Brian's solution? I wish I could deliver it just the way he does. He listens to me discuss my difficulties for about seventy-seven seconds and then takes me firmly by the shoulders, looks me directly and Marine-ly in the eyes and says─

"Write the damn essay."

Bath House Buddies

We had been warned about a great many things, but the danger of a communal shower had never been addressed. It didn’t even occur to us at the time. “Us” in this case means only Sheila and me, not the whole sixteen of us that were there teaching English. Sometime not far into the time we were there, the school arranged for the American teachers to spend a homestay weekend with various students. We were not actually involved in the selection of the students or really in any part of the decision making process of this venture. Our head teacher was the one who set up the pairs of us and coordinated with the Chinese liaison about which pair went where. I don’t know why, but Sheila and I were paired together. We didn’t really know each other apart from basic introductions at the beginning of the semester, but I could possibly see that in the respective groups we usually hung out in we were each a sort of odd man out. At any rate, Sheila and I got paired to go spend the weekend with a young teen boy named Mao Yue.

We didn’t know it at the time, but we were one of the luckier couples and ended up having, by comparison, a much better experience than the others. Since we were working at a boarding school, the students’ regular schedule had them going to school for a week and a half and then having a long weekend during which they usually went home to visit their families, most of whom lived in the same city. So it was that, armed with a backpack of supplies, we met Mao Yue at the gate to be bundled off for a weekend with his family. His English was not good, and we soon found that he was the only source of translation and communication. He had no older siblings and none of the dozens of “relatives” that visited over the entire weekend spoke any English at all. So Mao Yue was our translator.

Some other time if occasion arises I’ll narrate the weekend itself, the highlights of which, up to Saturday night, were us watching either Jaws or the music video of Superstar more times than I can remember, finding a chicken foot in my soup and the beak in Sheila’s, and getting violently ill on the first day. But the point of this story is to tell about Saturday night.

The whole weekend people kept coming over to visit. Whenever we asked Mao Yue who they were he just said “cousins.” We still don’t know if they were real cousins or if he didn’t know what the term meant because we did at one point spend time trying to track everyone into a family lineage and failed. But the point is, on Saturday night a somewhat larger than normal group had assembled at the house and, after dinner, were clearly congregating for some sort of outing. There was much chatter in Chinese, obviously, while Sheila and I stood off to one side waiting to be directed to do something. Finally Mao Yue came to us to try to explain that something.

We could tell it was important to him that he explain where we were going. This in and of itself was unusual since the previous nights when we went to restaurants or some show or carnival, if he hadn’t known the word for where we were going he had shrugged it off because we would know soon enough. Today he stood trying to come up with the vocabulary for some five minutes. Several times his mother or one of his “cousins” would shout new suggestions, most of which he waved away with irritation. We tried to supply different guesses, but he just kept shaking his head. At last he began making a weird sort of motion. With his left hand above his left shoulder and his right hand near his right hip, he made a synchronized movement along the line that would connect the two points.

“Maybe we’re going to a disco?” Sheila postulated.

“I think we might be going to a bath,” I said. Sheila denies that I ever said this, but I did. The motion Mao Yue was making reminded me of one using a long scrubbing cloth to clean one’s back; I had seen it before. I did not press the idea, though, because it seemed preposterous that we would go to a bathhouse for a family and guest evening.

Mao Yue finally just gave up in exasperation and instead said, “Bring bags.” The only bags we had were the backpacks of our supplies. We fetched them and asked if that was right, and he said it was. Sheila at this point jubilantly hoped that we were being returned to the school, though we had been told we wouldn’t go back until Sunday night.

“We must be going dancing or to a karaoke bar or something as a last party before they drop us off at the school,” Sheila cheerfully forecasted. I think she was still clinging to that hope when we stopped outside the building and Mao Yue made sure we had our backpacks with us. “Maybe the karaoke bar is upstairs?” Sheila’s confidence was clearly wavering.

We walked into a tidy, steam-filled lobby. Sheila and I were both silent. Mao Yue motioned for us to sit down on the waiting bench and told us to take off our shoes. This action alone didn’t raise any suspicions in us, but we regretted it very shortly thereafter because they locked our shoes away, and being shoeless takes more than a little steam out of one’s ability to cope or flee. It was at least very clear to both of us that we were not going dancing. Though we hadn’t really bonded over the last couple of days, Sheila and I were immediately allied in a very sincere discussion of escape.

“We’re at a bathhouse, Sheila. And they have our shoes.” Sheila replied by nodding grimly.

“Are they expecting us to bathe here? They can’t be expecting us to bathe here. Is it co-ed? It better not be co-ed.” This concern took priority, and we desperately glanced around until we both saw a clearly marked separate entrance for men and women.

“I don’t think it’s co-ed, then,” I said. Sheila shook her head. She probably didn’t notice that her head kept on shaking long after her agreement with my statement had been ascertained. “Maybe they have shower stalls.”

“Maybe they do!” Sheila perked up. “How do we check? Is that the women’s room there?”

“I’ll go look real quick,” I volunteered. In a moment I had slipped out of my backpack and stepped over to the thick plastic strips covering the entrance to the women’s room. I poked my head in and instantly withdrew and retreated to the bench.

“Well?”

“I dunno. There’s a naked woman on a couch in there. It’s just a locker room and a naked Chinese woman just laying down in there.” Sheila’s jaw had gone slack, and I was ready to die of embarrassment at having poked my head in on a woman reposing on a couch in a steam-filled locker room. I gripped the bench and told Sheila firmly, “I’m just not going in there. I’ll sit here and wait for them. We’ll tell Mao Yue that we don’t want to bathe here and we’ll just wait. We’ll just wait and they can come out and we’ll leave. It’ll be fine.”

Sheila’s voice was flat, and I could practically hear her brain whirring as she announced to me “Mao Yue and the men all left already. They went through.”

My head snapped up. Our translator had gone, our shoes had gone, and so had our moment for effecting any sort of escape attempt. Instead there stood Mao Yue’s mother. She approached us timidly and pointed that all the women were going into the locker room and we should accompany them. I shook my head. The locker room had not, as far as I had seen, been vacated. Mao Yue’s mother must just not know that there was a woman currently occupying the locker room. Whether she knew or not, she clearly had undertaken to be our guide through this and had started on Sheila once I shook my head. I can only think that Sheila was in a mental happy place by this time because she allowed herself to be escorted from the bench towards the locker room. Everything from here on out was very fuzzy, but I can only think that I determined not to abandon Sheila. In any case, moments later there we were standing in the locker room.

Sheila remained in a trance. She was just standing there holding the kitchen towel Mao Yue’s mother had handed her. Her jaw was still slack and she was just staring, alternately at me and at the woman who had neither vacated the locker room nor put on any stitch of clothing. The six or seven other women in our party were already disrobing and putting everything in their respective lockers. I just stood there too.

Mrs. Yue must have thought we were stupid, but she was very kind about it. She came over to us and, talking slowly in Chinese, tugged at our clothes and pointed to the locker then pointed to us and pointed to another entranceway covered by more plastic strips. Sheila was useless this whole time, but I began trying to argue with Mrs. Yue or at least demonstrate that I was not an imbecile.

“I know how it’s supposed to work, lady. I’ve taken showers before. But I’m not going to strip down right here and just go take a shower!” I don’t know what she thought I had said, but Mrs. Yue retreated for a few minutes to begin undressing. Sheila had taken off her backpack but then had resumed standing still holding her towel and staring. Most of the women in the party had lost little time undressing and had disappeared through the second doorway. Once again hoping for shower stalls, I stuck my head through the curtain into a large rectangular room with some twenty shower heads positioned at intervals around the walls. No stalls. No curtains. Just shower heads.

I returned to my locker and fumed. Mrs. Yue came once again and tugged at my sleeve and pointed at my locker. She was saying something I couldn’t understand but I did catch one word—“Meigua”—which simply means “America.” Understanding that one word set me off on a rant using that one Chinese word I had recognized. “Meigua! Meigua! In Meigua we don’t freaking do this! In Meigua we shower in private bathrooms with normal-sized towels and not a freaking audience! In Meigua we don’t go out to the bathhouse for a freaking outing! But we’re not in freaking Meigua now are we!”

By the time I finished my rant two things had happened. First, Mrs. Yue had left to take her shower. Secondly, Sheila had undressed down to a tank top and panties. The latter had been the catalyst for me shutting up. She hadn’t said a word since we left the lobby and now she was standing around in her underpants, still holding the hand towel. I was hyperventilating after my outburst but was now trying to wrap my head around the fact that Sheila, my one ally, was now nearly nude. The woman on the couch watched on in silence. Suddenly something inside Sheila snapped. Her jaw clamped shut, she stood tall and straight, looked directly at me and said, “It’s all part of the China experience.”

Off went her top, bang went the locker door, and away marched naked Sheila, head held high, into the steamy abyss. I’ve never felt so abandoned in my life. “All part of the China experience” was nowhere near an appropriate reason in my book for participating in a communal shower, but there was now really nothing to do. If I went out into the lobby there was no telling how long everyone would take showering, and I would have to wait alone and shoeless and feeling ridiculous. Besides, I’d have to pass the woman on the couch. Obviously I had passed her on the way in, but I couldn’t remember it whereas now she had nothing better to look at than me. So with a sinking feeling of resignation, I undressed, took my shower products in hand, and, sighing, stepped into the shower room.

Sheila had mercifully taken a shower head at the far end of the room. I joined her in that corner leaving a courtesy empty shower head between the two of us. From that moment on I don’t think I said another word. Sheila took over and courageously kept up a running monologue trying to point out the many positive aspects of this experience. I knew she was just talking for the sake of talking when she claimed that one good thing was that the shower head was tall enough as opposed to the one at the school where she had to crouch to use it. Clearly she wasn’t paying attention to herself because the shower head wasn’t tall enough and she was having to scrunch down anyway, but I wasn’t about to correct her for fear that she might come to and realize where she was.

To be entirely fair, it was the best shower I ever had in that country. The hot water supply in our apartments was dreadful, and I distinctly remember learning to shower in under four minutes so as not to freeze to death during the winter months. Apart from the gaggle of Chinese women on the other side of the room who kept staring at mine and Sheila’s much larger body parts and then back at their own, the shower had been not altogether unenjoyable. Sheila and I did not linger though. We finished in twenty minutes and waited for the others in the lobby for a further forty.

As we drove back to Mao Yue’s house that night, Sheila was as chatty as ever. I was much more inclined to try to forget the experience as soon as possible, but that didn’t seem to be Sheila’s approach. She made up for her mute half hour during the ordeal by talking about everything now. It was my turn to just carry on in silence. Just before we reached the house she had nearly finished.

“Thanks for letting me borrow your conditioner, by the way. I lent mine to Beth, but she never gave it back. I think she’s used it all up by now. We might have to go get some from that hair salon down the street. Did you see them checking us out on the other side of the room? I wonder what they think of us being bigger than they are. Did you see them? It’s funny how they’re smaller than us, huh? I mean it’s all still proportionate, but I wonder what they think.”

I was glad she never paused to wait for responses to her questions. I hadn’t wondered any of those things and had gotten quite distracted by her borrowing my conditioner, though it’s true I didn’t mind her using some. Thankfully we were expected just to go to bed when we returned to the house, and we did precisely that. As I turned out the light and curled up under the blanket, Sheila’s voice carried drowsily over to my side of the bed. “Good night, Bath House Buddy.” She’s never abandoned that title from that day to this.

Ten Years

At the behest of my younger sister, I present today's post─an essay I wrote for my freshman writing class ten years ago. I was tempted, as I reread this, to edit and try to rework or polish the piece, but chose instead to present it as it is.

                                                               Spear-Tooth Jenny

On a below-freezing February afternoon, we gathered in an empty concrete classroom to meet our new students. They filed in, marching in two neat lines, bundled in so many layers that their arms stuck out at a forty-degree angle from their marshmallow bodies. We were told they needed English names so we would be able to identify them. Duct tape and a Sharpie were produced, and the ensuing chatter echoed off the bare walls. We moved from child to child, kneeling on the cement floor until the frost seeped through our four layers of clothing and began to freeze our knees. Our gloved hands shook uncontrollably as we spelled out any name we could possibly think of. I took the last label from Sarah and stuck it to the second smallest girl in the room. “Your name is Jenny.”

She was the quietest of my seven first-rotation students. A small girl, even by Chinese standards, she barely cleared two and a half feet. She chose to sit in the tallest desk, and for practical purposes, I chose to give her the tallest chair. Even then she was only high enough to rest her chin on the edge of the wooden desktop. She paid little attention to the antics of her fellow classmates and demanded even less from me. So for the first few weeks, Jenny went almost entirely overlooked.

The boarding school had taught the children three key phrases in preparation for our classes. They could tell us their names, ask us how we were, and respond with a robotic “Fine, thank you, and you?” Our classes were as basic as possible. We encouraged the children to try, to explore, to test out new words. Most were delighted at the thought of being able to communicate with us and were eager to gain the necessary tools. Others lacked such enthusiasm and spent the class periods gazing out the third-story windows or meandering around the edges of the whitewashed walls. Jenny sat in her desk, never saying anything more than “My name is Jenny, ” and eventually saying nothing at all. I dismissed her casually and focused my attention on the six children who were at least attempting to learn my name.

My name, however, proved too difficult for the Chinese to pronounce. After two frustrating weeks, the children decided “Teacher” was an adequate title. I felt oddly disappointed. It had never occurred to me that something so simple would create such a barrier between me and my students. I grew more and more distant from the children and spent less time preparing for class and more time just trying to stay warm.

I wore four layers of clothing to class and still had to take time to run laps around the room. I never sat down for fear of losing feeling in my feet. My nose was chapped, my cheeks were raw, and my lips were cracked because I couldn’t cover my face. The metal frame of my glasses got so cold it felt like fire when it pushed against my skin. My fingers were numb and leaden after the first hour of teaching. After two hours, I stamped around the classroom to keep the blood flowing to my feet. After the third hour, I was shaking so hard I could barely make it down the stairs without falling. This, I told myself, is not worth it for a bunch of kids who don’t even know my name.

The Chinese told us it would be warming up soon, but we had to make it through the coldest week first. I decided to make a lesson out of hot chocolate so that I wouldn’t freeze to death in my cell-like classroom. I set everything up a few minutes before class and went to collect my students. The lesson went well and was in full swing when I asked if anyone could tell me my name. I glanced around the semicircle of broken plastic desks and waited as the children hemmed and hawed and scrunched their noses in deep thought. No surprise here. I hadn’t expected them to know it. I picked up a bottle of heated water and moved to fill the paper cups sitting on each desk. Suddenly from behind me came a low, squeaky utterance. I turned, wondering who was trying to say something and what was trying to be said. I found myself facing Jenny’s desk. She sat as upright as she could, her chin just a half inch away from the desktop. She had a red beanie with Minnie Mouse on the right hand side pulled down to cover her ears and rest just above her eyebrows. Her chocolate brown eyes gazed up at me and she smiled as though she knew something I didn’t and thought it extremely funny. “Man-nee,” she said.

“What?”

“Man-nee. Teacher name Man-nee.” She sat back, obviously proud of herself. She had remembered my name. I stood, still holding the hot water in one hand and a packet of Swiss Miss in the other and stared in wonder at little Jenny. I couldn’t recall any time in the last month that she had said anything besides her own name. Now, here she sat, remarkably happy with her success in being the first to remember mine.

A whistle sounded from the next room, and I suddenly realized I had class to finish and only two minutes to finish it in. I hurried the children through cleanup and told them to line up. Jenny was first in line, and as we stood at the door waiting for the rotation to come around, she tapped my leg and pulled at my hoodie. I turned, and she motioned for me to crouch down. I obeyed, and she turned my head to whisper in my ear. “Teacher name My-nee.” I smiled at her and told her she was right. She opened her mouth to laugh out loud and revealed tiny teeth that had begun to rot from the outside and work on in. Her four front teeth were already triangular and blackened at the edges, each one coming to an almost perfect point. We called her Spear-Tooth Jenny.

Jenny made it her business to teach every student my name. By the end of the week, even the students I had never taught would call out to me from across the courtyard. In class Jenny became one of the most active participants. She left her seat and perched on top of the desk in order to command a better view of the classroom. If the lesson I had prepared was less than perfect, she made sure I knew. If her classmates got distracted, she made sure to bring their focus back to me. If I ever acted too tired or distant in class, she climbed down off her desk, onto my lap and made sure I was okay.

Every other weekend the children went home to visit their families, and we took time to explore China. We loved the time off, but we were always sure to be back by Sunday dinner when the children waited to welcome us home. We braced ourselves on the bumpy ground as the wave of running children broke against us like the sea on a rocky beach. Little Jenny was always among the first to run straight into my arms. We played with our kids until dusk fell, flying kites on the soccer field and running races around the track. We made dandelion chain necklaces and tried to whistle through grass blades. We swung them round in circles until we collapsed from dizziness and exhaustion. When dark fell, we kissed them good-night and sent them off to bed.

Months passed, and suddenly we realized the time had come to say good-bye. The children raced across the courtyard to gather around us in one huge squirming mob. We hushed them and took the smaller ones in our arms. With Jenny resting her head on my shoulder, I made the announcement. “Tomorrow Teacher go to America.” An instant silence fell. We couldn’t bring ourselves to say more, and the children couldn’t bring themselves to believe it.

I hadn’t come to China for the children. They were a side note. A postscript. I had come for the Great Wall, for the Terra Cotta Warriors, for the Guilin mountains. I thought when I left that those were the things I would be saying good-bye to. Those were the things I would miss. But when the time came, as we loaded our suitcases on the bus, we turned to a crescendo of voices rising from across the campus. Fifty-six Chinese children were running full tilt across the soccer field. They raced down the track and jumped up the stairs. They sprinted over the decorative sidewalk tiles edged with weeds. They flew past the fountain where the goldfish lived and sailed into our open arms. I found myself surrounded, with Jenny in my arms and tears on my face and hers. I had not come to China for the children. But as the bus pulled out, as we waved good-bye to everything we had called home, I found I could say good-bye to everything. Everything except Spear-Tooth Jenny.