-^-for posterity-^-

breakfast today with mr. tri.

we ate at a small road-side stand on the other side of long xuyen. we ate and chatted and had a wonderful time. we practice learning phrases and words and he listens patiently while i explain my questions and i listen patiently as he asks what such-and-such means. we get along famously.

while you eat you’re constantly bombarded by small children and handicap people selling lottery tickets. today i counted and there were a total of 32 people that came to our table pushing their goods.

a typical situation: a small boy/girl walks up to the table with a bag slung around their neck. they hold a small wad of thin tickets in their outstretched hands. their faces look blank but i try not to make eye contact. usually, there is an oversized baseball cap towering above their heads and pushing their ears out a bit. you feel their hands gently touch your arm as only a child can. you really feel compassion. here is this small bundle of life, so much potential, and their here selling you a small, thin slice of fate. they could be out playing little-league baseball like i did when i was their age.

the handicap lottery ticket vendors are just as compelling. today there were two notable cases: there was an old lady who hobbled in on one good leg. her right foot was only a nub and she had it wrapped in a special shoe. she could still walk, but did so with great difficulty. he face was shadowed by a large conical hat and her skin was thicker than leather. my insides melted. there was a man that was wheeled up in a wheelchair. it was wheeled by a small girl who had problems pushing him up the small ramp to the sidewalk. her hair was long and matted and her close hung lifelessly on her frail frame. the man was plump and had no legs. he deftly climbed off of his wheelchair and proceeded to move through the restaurant. he moved by shifting his weight from one side of his hips to the other. it made an odd scraping noise on the ground that was impossible to overlook even with the roar of the traffic outside. a large hat was perched on his head and a cigarette hung limply from his lips. he ambled by on the other side of our table. he was too short to see over it and all i could make out was his hat bobbing along like a bottle lost at sea.

there were a group of young construction workers sitting at a table next to ours. a man reached over and tapped me on the shoulder and asked what time it was. i told him poorly and crudely. the man once again tapped me on the shoulder and showed me a 200 bill. it’s not really worth anything here but he told me that it was worth 50,000. he said that i should trade him for it. he got quite a kick out of it and his table burst out into laughter. i couldn’t figure out if he though i was actually that stupid.

a small boy walked up to his table and asked if they wanted lottery tickets. he looked like all of the other youngsters: large eyes, matted hair, towering baseball cap. the men were leaving and the boy was not persistent. he stood off and watched them stand up. the same man who had asked me to trade him a 200 bill for a 50,000 bill grabbed his left over water and tossed it on the boy. the boy stood there in shock as he watched the men walk off to their motorcycles.