Yoo Pai Now

There's no way to imagine my current life as anything but nonsensical.

I don't understand it myself nor can I justify asking anyone else to make any sense of it. You will be motivated to inquire as to how I got myself into the following situation. I would suggest you simply roll with it, as the backstory is far too complicated.

I was with my disabled student Neddy* sitting in a dingy Chinese restaurant. It was mid-afternoon and neither of us were hungry. This is inexplicable, I know. This is my life.

So there we sat, waiting for pork fried rice and chicken fingers.** The food came up speedily, so speedily in fact, that I excused myself from the table to take a pee, left Neddy alone at the table, our food arrived, Neddy ate the bulk of his chicken fingers and had begun eyeballing my pork fried rice - all in time it took me to zip, unzip, flush, wash and re-enter the dining area of the restaurant.

This kid eats like he's on a timed game show. Like we're takin' a hundred bucks off the Big Board for every second that he's not done eating. And when he is done, there can be no mistaking it, because you will find him sitting there, with a gaping smile wide enough to fit a banana, sideways into it. Crusts of food and shmutz all over his chin and lips.

With hands still damper than I'd like from the bathroom faucet and lack of towels, I came back to see this ghastly creature having annihalated his chicken fingers in Guinness World time.

It is at this moment that I am having trouble recalling why we didn't just go to the Wendy's drive-thru.

I say, "That's some mighty fine eatin' you did there, kiddo."
He says, "Mm-hmm. I know it. I know it." ***
I say, "I haven't even started my meal; what're you gonna do 'til I'm done?"
He says, "Mm. I dunno. Sing and dance. Sing and dance."
He knows this will embarrass me. This is the only reason he might possibly want to sing and dance in this ramshackle Chinese restaurant.
I say, "If you start singing and dancing, I'm leaving you here and your mom can come and get you."
He says nothing. His disability makes it difficult for me to always decipher whether he's understood me or not.
I continue, "You still hungry? You can have some of my fried rice."
He says with a slight stutter, "T-that w-w-would be good."
I shovel a third of my rice onto his plate. It's gone before I can resume eating my own meal.
The rice is on the floor.
It's on his chair.
Chin.
I've worked with him for six months on using a fork with rice. He won't do it.
Hands are easier. He'll use his hands.

* * *

I quickly finish my fried rice, which was by no means an easy task, because while attempting to finish, Neddy sat patiently picking at the scabs on his hands. Scabs that were formed from Neddy's nervous habits at picking at his hands.
These scabs will never heal.
These wounds have been fresh for years.
Gloves don't work.
It's a nervous sensory development.
His mother makes him nervous.
His scabs make me not want to finish my rice. So I ask for the check. A short, squat man wearing very busy tie happily gives us the check (I'd be happy too at the possibility of getting this human tornado the hell out of my eating establishment).
I go for my wallet. Not there. It's in the car.

It's important for you to know three things about my current situation:

3 Things About My Current Situation

1. I never forget my wallet. Never. Before right now, I cannot recall another instance in which I didn't have my wallet and needed it. Because of this impossible lapse in character, and my already beset annoyance with Neddy, my anger was boiling up.

2. The location of my wallet (my car) was about 20 feet away from my current location (restaurant table), seperated only by a wide pane of glass. I could see my car from my table.

3. We eat at this restaurant about once a week. We're known. With someone like Neddy, I find it impossible to believe that week-after-week they don't remember us. Nevermind that I'm impossibly gorgeous, Neddy is also quite unforgettable.

So there you go. Now that you've been preemptively warned as to what I'm dealing with here, let us continue.

In a situation like this, any normal human being would calmly explain himself to the waiter, quickly excuse himself (leaving his accompaniment sitting tableside as an unspoken collateral), retrieve any due monies, return, pay, exeunt.
And seeing as how I consider myself a fairly normal human being, this is what I purported to do. I explained myself to the grinning waiter who has seen us in this place no less than twelve times since the start of 2006.

He says, "No, no. You pay now."
I blink.
I stammer.
I repeat, "I can't pay now. My wallet... my money is in my car..."
The waiter grins wider.
He says, "Oh okay..."
Sigh of relief. His English isn't that great and my Chinese is even worse and I worried we'd have a problem.
He continues, "...So you pay now."
Anger growing.
I say, "Sir, I'd like to pay now. I'd love to pay now. But I can't because I accidentally left my money in my car. But I'll leave my friend here, get my money from the car and pay you. It will take a few seconds."^
The grin disappears from the waiter. He suddenly looked alarmingly mean.
Visions of Mr. Miyagi.
Visions of tiny Asian men surprising a cocky white populace with their fatal karate blows.
Visions of me getting my ass beat by an old man in front of my student.

The waiter says, "No, no. You pay now. You pay now or I call the police. You pay now."
He kept saying this - 'you pay now' - over and over and over, like a mantra.
I said, "Sir, I can't. What do you want me to do? I've got money in the car but not here. He's got no money at all."

This last bit was true, Neddy didn't have any money (he never does) but his parents have millions and I was suddenly enraged at the thought that this millionaire kid couldn't somehow help me. I eat friggin' macaroni and cheese for breakfast... why do I have to be the hero here?

The waiter stands firm, "You pay now or I call cops."
Then the waiter did something I doubt I will ever forget. He grabs Neddy's empty water glass, lifts it four or five inches off the table and slams it back on the table.

That's it.

He wasn't trying to break it. It was like the waiter, at that point, wished he had a judge's gavel, didn't, and opted to settle for Neddy's glass.
How weird is that? Why did he do that, I wonder.
The waiter repeats, "You pay now or I call cops."
The waiter turns around and disappears into the kitchen.
Oh shit. He's calling the cops. Shit. Shit.
I think, fuckit. Let the cops come. They'll think this is as dumb as I do.
I tell Neddy, "Neddy get your jacket on."
Neddy, dried rice chipping off his chin, puts his coat on. He says, "A-a-are you g-g-going to pay?"
"Yes, Neddy. Of course I'm going to pay. But I've got to leave to pay. So we're going to leave. But yeah, I'm coming back."
Neddy takes anywhere from 13 to 45 minutes to properly put on a jacket. I didn't have that kind of time. I didn't want to deal with police. I had no reason to. I leave Neddy to fiddle with his jacket and I rush to my car. Like a scene out of a James Bond movie, I'm in the car, I'm grabbing my wallet, I'm looking through the window to see if the happy waiter is hitting Neddy with a baseball bat.
I'm oddly nervous.
Our meal was $11 something. I only have twenties.
I'm not asking for change.
Apparently, I'm giving this asshole an 85% tip.
Sonuvabitch.

I'm back in the restaurant, no one is there. No other customers. No waiter, no other workstaff. Nothing. I drop the twenty on the table and realize that this would be an awesome time to shout out a clever remark to punctuate my rebellion (or their ridiculousness).
I pause, standing over my table. Rice all over.

I think about saying, "Keep the change, fuckface!"
Nah. Too Bruce Willis.
I think about saying, "I want my change. You pay now! You pay now!"
Nah. That's no good either 'cause then I'd have to wait there and follow through with my comment. And also, I worried that mimicking his accent would border on a racial slur.
I say nothing. I leave. Neddy's got 75 percent of his jacket on. He's making good time.

I should help him, but he's got to learn that the whole world isn't here to serve him.

I'm his teacher, I'm here to teach him lessons about life.

Today's lesson: Neither he nor I will ever be back in that Chinese restaurant ever again.

====================

* for more information on Neddy, please see my previous blog entitled The Grift.

** I could take this kid to the middle of a water-scarce Ethiopian village and he'd miraculously find someone able to supply him with chicken fingers. He can't spell his own name, but he can insure that he never ever again samples any food that isn't a chicken finger.

*** It should be noted that Neddy speaks in a ultrasonic shrill voice that sounds, uh... very homosexual to put it mildly. After months of being around this student o'mine, I have deduced that he is not actually homosexual though. Far from heterosexual as well, Neddy is, most accurately, asexual. Unfortunately, his mother, Barbara Streisand and Ellen Degeneres are his three biggest influences (followed in a distant fourth, by me) and very few "manly" affectations permeate his garbled mind.

More unfortunate still, is that everyone finds this affectation "adorable" about Neddy, (who secretly hates everyone on Earth) and they dress him up in shirts that say, "I Ellen" or "Streisand Fever", which serve only to make him hate himself more.

Worst of all, I am the one who must be seen with him in a Chinese restaurant; all gunked up from dust-bustin' food into his mouth and draped in effitte t-shirts.

Sometimes I have the urge to punch things.

^ Oh God, did I just refer to Neddy as "my friend"? In all likelihood, Neddy hates me. I make him mind his manners and engage in physical activity more exhausting than searching for the television remote control. In his funhouse mirror of an existence, my actions consist of someone who is his enemy.

Me calling him a friend, is the emotional equivalent of calling the captain of my high school's cheerleading squad, my wife, despite the fact she didn't know my name.

This one's gonna cost me.