Monday, September 11, 2006

sweet old man

Yesterday as I was waiting for the bus in China Town there was a cute old asian man sitting next to me. He only spoke one word of English (as I discovered at the end of our short acquaintance) and that is "buh bye". So as we were sitting there, he was eating some candies, and he offered me one. I tried to politely refuse, but he wouldn't accept it, so I decided one couldn't hurt and thanked him. He gave me two. He demonstrated that I needed to open it and eat it immediately, so I did, not wanting to hurt his feelings.
Memories of my childhood immediately surfaced. Remembering when Barry and Cheri Williamson came back from Indonesia and were visiting us. We played with native hunting blow spear things, and had fun shooting arrows in our backyard. When they were leaving, they gave me a candy, which I gladly accepted, and as we waved goodbye I tried desperately not to hurl, because this candy tasted so incredibly nasty. They thought it was a fun joke, and I decided that in years to come I could look back on that moment with laughter.
Memories of Japan flashed back. We were doing the close-your-eyes-open-your-mouth Japanese junk food tasting thing. Josh was sitting next to me, with his eyes open, saying things such as "Good Lord, that's not going anywhere near my mouth!" "That eyeball is staring at me" and other such non-appetizing warnings.
Yesterday, that man gave me the same candy the Williamsons had given me, I'm sure of it. It was absolutely disgustingly horrible tasting. I popped it into my mouth with him looking on, and gave him a quick smile (which hopefully was not a grimace) and I slipped the candy under my tongue until an opportune moment to discretely spit it out.
Then, through our miming conversation, we discovered we were waiting for the same bus. And, surprisingly enough, we got off on the same stop. Right before the stop he shoved 3 more candies into my hand, and then said "buh bye".
So if anyone wants to taste the nasty candy, I have 4 available. Actually, 3 because Nicole wants one.
Also, I forgot the best part of the story. While we were waiting for the bus to come this man started stretching and doing karate type kicks and hand motions for a good 10 minutes. Highly amusing. The man is shorter than I am, and probably at least in his 70s. Dang he was cute though, haha.

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