the year of the chicken foot

as most of you may know my life is on hiatus, im living in the basement of the family's house, unemployed, and still struggling with my back problems. so i have decided to occupy my time and brain by taking chinese (mandarin) language classes at the local community college. the makeup of the students of my chinese class differ from that of my earlier spanish class. who when asked their motivation for learning spanish responded (in a thick southern draw) "cuz i wurk wit a bunch of 'em n need u tell 'em wur to putt tha drywalllll" or "so i can talk to the hired help". where this class consists mostly of hickory "businessmen" which means they likely grew up here and are middle management at a textile manufacturer with a plant in china, but not to say they are especially worldly.

my favorite moments during class are when we take a break and our teacher leads us in tai-chi, a form of aerobic martial arts. I wholly enjoy watching these "corporate businessmen" balance and pirouette around the room all the while cussing under the breaths about "crazy chinese... blah blah blah... egg roll... blah blah... im missing the ball game for this crap... blah blah blah..." i love it!!!

anyway we were invited to a chinese new year party at a local chinese buffet out in the country. i brought my friend, thom, along to share in this once-in-a-lifetime experience. we were under the impression that there would be fireworks, those life-sized dragons, and copious amounts of egg rolls. au contraire mon freir. we arrived late and snuck into a booth across from a older white man and a 30ish chinese woman. the group of 50 people, mostly chinese, were going around introducing themselves in chinese and wishing happy new year. they came to thom and i, so i stood and said my name and thanked them for having us and began to sit but they stopped me and asked for me to say something in chinese. i told them it would be ugly but counted from 6 to 10 on my hands, which they represent in a more creative way than we do. the introductions continued around the room, i turned and quietly asked a man if i did the hand motions correctly. apparently i chose the man with no kind of auditory volume control as he loudly explained that i was signing some sort of drinking game. we were suddenly aware that the entire room was looking at us and the head woman said "hey animal shut up" (i dont know) because there was a small girl being encouraged to speak chinese to the crowd.

after the introductions we filled our plates full of noodles, shrimp, dumplings, pork knuckles, and all-you-can-eat chicken feet. yummmmy. we began to talk to the couple across from us. which started like this "where did you meet?" "i got her on Yahoo, yeah you boys should do it, just type in 'asian brides', and bam you get em. hell the first day i had a hundred hits from thailand, taiwan, phillipines, all over." "wow" "yeah i goed ov'r ere and picked lil binny here right up, you boys wouldn't believe but they got cities n cars n tvs. they re dumb but boy they sure lik to smile." his wife all the while is running roughshod through a pile of chicken feet, chewing them whole and letting the bones dribble out of her mouth onto the table. he would occasionally turn to her and ask something and it would appear she would respond either "yes, no or chicken." with a limited vocabulary i can only imagine their discussions on existentialism and quantum physics.

the man pointed out another older american gentleman at another table and remarks "well ol darryl o'er there is going to jfk to pick him up one next week. you boys really oughta get you one." to each his own.