-^-for posterity-^-

i had my vietnamese lesson with ms. hà as i do every afternoon. we both sit on opposite sides of a large marble table on the roof. it’s pleasant and neither one of us have successfully cracked the language code.

today she asked me to tell her a story so she could practice her listening skills. she said “snowy white.” i though she wanted to hear about snow seeing as how this part of the world would never have that experience. she said, “no.” she wanted to hear about “snowy white” the fairy tale. snow white. i’m not all that familiar with the story. i know there are seven, or twelve dwarfs. i know that she ate an apple and almost doed. there’s a mirror involved somewhere. oh, and she’s woken from a coma by a kiss.

thinking she had never heard the story and maybe been told about american fairy tales in her language class, i imagined i could make a few details up to fill in the gaps. whoops. i started, “there was this princess, with a crown and she lived in a small hut.” what on earth. a princess in a hut? that’s what i said though, honest. “she had seven or more friends who were dwarfs, you know, very small people.” she nodded. “she ate a bad apple given to her by her mother-in-law.” wait a minute. how on earth, if she was a single princess, did she have a mother in law. i paused for a moment, thought i was an idiot and continued. ms. hà sat stone faced. “the princess was in a coma because someone put a magic spell on the apple. she was fast asleep. her small friends scurried around and were very worried until a handsome man rode up on a horse. he kissed snow white and she woke up. they married and lived happily ever after.” i thought i had done the story justice. sensing that something was wrong with her expression, i added, “oh, and the dwarfs were named grumpy, sleepy, daisy and something else.” she scowled.

she grabbed the dictionary and found two words. they were, “overlook” and, “fact”. she said, “you overlook many fact.” she was very disappointed in me and it wasn’t a joke. “has no one ever read you this story when you are a child?”, she said. i said, “well, i don’t think so.” oh my, that put her over the edge. she threw a couple hands over her head and muttered something in vietnamese. she ended our session with, “i thought all vietnamese and american children knew this story. i am very sad that your parents never taught it to you.”

she thought we had at least one story that we both knew. there is not much that a privileged american life and an underprivileged vietnamese life have in common. while i may have studied more and seen more of the world, she understands where the mirror fits into the story and i do not. in some ways i envy her.

i was also confronted by a vietnamese dog today. it was small and had a chip on its shoulder. i was walking down the street in the middle of the afternoon, not going anywhere. avoiding the cracks and the trash on the sidewalks is a challenge. trying to watch what’s going on around me at the same time compounds this challenge. if you look down, you miss the world around you. if you look up you stumble. you end up switching between up and down and stumbling all the while.

i was walking in a small crowd. there was a restaurant to my right and i noticed the dog from a distance. the dog struck me because it was sitting upright and observing the world. i thought, if i was a dog, i would probably act similarly. the dog wasn’t looking at me. not yet.

then it all happened. chaos. the dog found me and started barking and yelling and ran up to me. i kept walking. maybe if i ignored it it would leave me alone. it was only a small dog. nothing to be afraid of. maybe it would bite me and draw blood but if i acted as the dominant species, maybe it would leave me alone. it did. it left me and walked back to where it was sitting.

why did this strike me? well, i was walking in a crowd and was singled out. this dog found characteristic of mine so unappealing that s/he decided to yell at me. was it possible that the dog knew i was a foreigner? are animals able to notice and distinguish races? i didn’t possibly think so. did i smell horribly? no, i had showered this morning. was i wearing anything to make me stand out among the people with which i was walking? no, just khakis and a black tshirt. well, what was it? could this possibly involve the spiritual world? i mean, i really don’t even believe that there is a chaotic spiritual world. i don’t think i’m surrounded by ghosts and demons and what not but i’ve already exhausted all of my possibly earthly explanations! if i can’t rationalize it, it must be irrational. either that or i don’t have the capacity to rationalize it. maybe this little pooch noticed some evil spirit surrounding me. maybe s/he was trying to do me a favor and scare it away.

honestly, my first thought after exhausting all of my earthly rationalizations was that maybe this was some crazy spiritual dog just sitting on the corner looking out for evil. it really unnerved me.

tomorrow: badminton with the vietnamese friends that sang karaoke. should be fun.