After the last wreck, with the combined religious moment and mysterious disappearance of my goddess Guanyin icon, I've been looking for a Guanyin talisman, which I bought last weekend while staying with my Reiki teacher. It's a tiger's eye carving in a rattan necklace, bulky and ostentatious in the local style insofar as the weave is--of necessity--thick enough to be noticed and of an unmistakable design: local, Buddha/Hindu charm.
Backstory 2:
First day in country, from my boss: "Whatever you do, do not touch a kid. You'll see me roughhousing and playing around with 'em, but that's who I am, you know? I'm old. I live here, I have lived here, my daughter goes to school here, and that's just the type of guy I am. Until you have that reputation, DO NOT TOUCH A KID. People come to Thailand for that stuff, and if you are ever accused, you will be held guilty and we will cut your visa, no questions asked."
Backstory 3:
Washoe County's Detective Moen staring me down and saying, "Why did you do this?" without seeming to hear, "I didn't" or assume innocence until proven otherwise.
Cut to action:
I'm at a festival where they release balloons and little round crown-like rafts to let bad mental holdings-on go. They take it pretty seriously with the rafts: the decorations are folded-up banana leaves with marigolds and orchids and look like impeccable miniatures of multi-thousand-dollar centerpieces.
I'm sure it's different elsewhere, but that's how it is with my Prattom (middle school) kids. They spend weeks creating floats, and the floats are absolutely spectacular. Then they light candles and incense and send the floats down the river.
Naturally, I stumbled into this just shy of completely ignorant: I'd been told it's next weekend.
So I'm walking around the riverbank among FULLY done-up Thai regalia (call me lazy for resorting to cliches, but I'm in Thailand where this one is forbidden so my writerly karma neutralizes: picture any of the regal sort of showoffenous scenes from Anna and the King). It's inspiring to see people don the pride of their heritage and display its regalia enmasse.
Just imagine if a Nascar crowd was something to proudly display to the world and history as the finest possible representation of America. That much spirit, but instead of grease-hued trucker caps, hairy beer guts, cheesy plumber cracks, and plastic keg cups, the ladies sport the golden gowns and bodices and jewelry and gold-laced silks and such.
"TEACHER HARRY POTTER! HARRY POTTER HARRY POTTER HARRY POTTER!"
It's an excited student. She's an excited student. Done-up beautifully. And waving. From the middle of a flock of other, equally done-up students, all of whom are thrilled at being done up and out late and celebrating after releasing their kratong.
This bodes ill.
It's not the babbling flock: that part's pretty fun, if I catch myself off guard. It was that my students brought their friends and relatives--all female--and quickly exhausted their patience with, "Where you go?" "What you do?" "Is fun, no?"
First someone found my Guanyin pendant. And there was much pressing-in and to-do of looking and pulling and touching. Of me. By girls, women, Princesses of the Great Siamese Court, and they are pawing at me.
And discover MY BELT!
It's a Northwest tribal sort of totem design popular among the stateside REI brigade and essentially unheard of here. Especially since it has a secret little zippered money pouch.
Well, in the furor of inspecting this outlandish adornment, the money pouch is discovered. The belt is removed.
Consider: pants didn't fit me when I came here. Then I lost a whole bunch of weight.
And as I reach for my belt I realize that there is someone tugging at my waistband and if I don't get a good, solid grip on things real, real quick, I stand in good stead of losing my pants.
Oh, and did I mention losing weight since coming here, and pant sizes being too big to begin with? That goes for boxers, too.
And from feeling like the bull with his tail between his legs, looking sheepishly up at the British nanny tutting him for being so ungainly and foolish for working himself amid the displays of antique lacquerware, I'm facing a tribunal, and they are not pleased about me gallivanting around their family outing without pants down and my junk bouncing around in front of their gathered daughters.
Here's the good thing about the weeks spent yelling, without benefit of a bamboo cane, over boomy classrooms full of echoing yells of sixty kids: I have a serious Teacher Voice. And maybe it was a little bit startling for those nearest, and maybe a bit curious for the mommies and daddies on the far side of the park, but as I retrieved my belt and made great show of cinching down the extra inches, the idea got across. I hope.
So there you go.
Here's hoping I know with enough notice to bring a camera to the next one, and thanking all the marshmallows in the lucky charms that I did not become the subject of a photo-worthy news event.
No comments:
Post a Comment