-^-for posterity-^-

we sat around eating un-ripened mangos and talking. some of the agricultural department invited us to their shack and we were more than happy to oblige. one of the men asked us if we liked mangos and we said yes. he ran out of the room, climbed a tree, and picked some off. they taste like sourness and had the texture of dirt. we’re not sure why people eat mangos when they’re green instead of when they’re fleshy and orange. i guess people’d rather eat un-ripened mangos rather than not eat any at all. if they let them wait, someone’s bound to take them first.

i learned a really important lesson. we were talking about age and culture. how, in vietnam, it’s not offensive to ask anyone anything. there are four basic questions that strangers ask: what’s your name? how old are you? do you have a wife/girlfriend? and how much money do you make? you surely are able to answer these four questions after a month of vietnamese training.

we went around the table talking about age, birthdates and the year of the goat. the year of the goat is jack’s year. he doesn’t look like a goat at all but i’m sure he exhibits some goatish qualities. my year is the year of the monkey. nothing more needs to be said.

the man across from the table said he was also twenty two years old. i smiled and we looked at each other and pretended to have something in common. i don’t believe either one of us decided in what year we were to be born.

it turns out that he was twenty two according to vietnamese standards. the year of your birth counts as year one. you gain another year every time the lunar new year comes around. the man was only nineteen. it turns out i’m twenty four.

i can’t tell you how difficult it was to understand. all this time i had thought i was twenty two. i thought that every june seventeenth i gained another year. i cut another notch. it turns out i’m much older. twenty four. twenty four. i should be doing something else if i’m twenty four.

i looked in the mirror today and still looked twenty two.