Friday Reverie

The sky was overcast. You just avoided catastrophe. Today you flirted with disaster and you escaped. You felt good. Rain is actually coming down. A hurricane (how many know the word came from Spanish via American Indian Taino language? We have hurricanes in Western hemisphere but typhoons and storms somewhere else) of sentiments and memories are sweeping over your body and mind. Winds and rains have an effect on you. You become slightly unhinged and you want to fly, to do outrageous things, to push your limits to the extreme while pushing everybody's button to see what exactly they are made of? hard stone or mere clay which can be easily washed away from a hard rain?

You remember walking in the rain after learning that you just  passed your first academic hurdle in high school. Your success surprised everybody in the neighborhood because for years you had neglected schooling and spending more time roaming the streets than hitting the books. Your success overwhelmed your mother. When you broke the news to her, she was first speechless and then tears came to her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. You said nothing. You wanted to embrace her and tell her that from now on she would not have to worry about you, but you knew she didn't want physical display of affection. So you just said you wanted to get out of the house and go to see a friend. In the rain? She said. Now? You replied that you had to go right now. So, you put the raincoat on, took your bicycle out, and pedaled slowly in the rain and in the wind. The wind drove the rain to your face and down your neck, but you kept on pedaling for hours while inside you a maelstrom of mixed emotions was swirling. You kept telling yourself you got to be good and you got to be sane. Two years later, you got another academic success along with an opportunity to spend a year with an American family. You remember you had to compete with students from French-speaking lycees. The American interviewer had a Ph.D. You no longer remember his name. He was big and fat and middled-aged and appeared kindly. He asked you if you were selected to represent your country and while being in the States if people told you all Asians looked alike and to them there were no differences between Chinese and Vietnamese, how you would  answer to that observation. Without a moment's hesitation, you launched an impassioned speech in simple but clear English of the differences between the two peoples not only in physical appearances (Chinese, especially Northern Chinese, are taller and fairer , but also cultural activities (betal nut chewing, dresses, lacquering, food). The examiner sat there and smiled from beginning to end. When you left the room, you knew you aced it. That year there were two girls from Lycee Marie Curie selected. One of them occupied your heart for a while, but one day, again while riding in the rain, (this time on a motorbike) you realized that your affection was misplaced and you had to walk away.

Today, rain is falling down like the rain of yore. You are a middle-aged man now and about to die. You are no longer the boy of 15, 17, and 19. You wonder where all that time went. You then realize life is just a memory and a reverie. The other day, a dude grossly impressed with himself used bad language in "communicating" with you. You used words to show him and the world that he had made a bad mistake. By trying to degrade you, he degraded himself. You wondered out loud that you were completely and utterly taken by surprise by his odious display of opprobrium and ill-manner and his failure of following his own pious, sanctimonious advice he had dispensed to other people when they had differences with you. You pointedly concluded that bad manners reflect poor upbringing and lousy character.

When it cones to words, you are very much at home, way back when you first talked with the American examiner. In fact, way, way back when you were a little boy, you had speech impediments. You stuttered badly and you mispronounced words. Even to this day, there are certain sounds in your mother tongue you cannot articulate, but somehow your brain compensated for that defect by developing a network of associations and you found yourself curious about words and their functions. As a consequence, you have a verbal facility and have no problem of articulating precisely what you want to say.