...by the one (late elementary school-age) (immigrant) daughter of my one (newer) (tall) (Thai) coworker, when I recently asked her how her school year ended up and what grade she was going into:
"I'm turning fifth grade."
. . .
(She must understand the phrase "I'm turning" to indicate a subsequently-specified new stage, like "I'm turning ten," therefore "I'm turning fifth grade.)
1) My one (new) (tall) (skinny) (Chinese from China) coworker tells me as we fold silverware, "I have to admit, I am from China, but I become afraid when I see two Chinese students at a table."
2) At a four-top that's (three) (South Asian) people including a (identically matte dun-brown-skinned) (very South Asian) (older) (couple) where the (skinny) man has glasses and is (balding with hair combed across the top) and the wife is (the same build but a little plumper) and in a (crisp white-and-bright-green-patterned) sari, as well as their (mildly horse-faced) (long straight-haired) (slow-speaking) daughter and a (cleancut) (blocky-headed) (Chinese?) guy that she's apparently dating, they order 3 entrees for 4 people, hold off on maybe ordering an extra rice (they don't), and they ask for extra glasses, for the specialty sodas they brought with them -- namely, tamarind and pineapple Jarritos, brought in in a little white plastic shopping bag.
"Let's play a game," I was like to my one (new) (tall) (Thai) coworker, "How much tip do you think they will leave?"
Then, when she wasn't sure, I was like, "Twelve percent," and then she thought, and she was like, "Ten percent."
Then, we told our one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phone about the game, and she was like, "I have to go one direction or another," and then she thought some, and finally she was like, "Fifteen."
Later, the bill came and... It was almost exactly fifteen percent!
"You won, you won!", we were like, to her.
But, she didn't seem pleased.
"I thought low too, but you went first and I had to go one direction and I pick fifteen," she was like.
. . .
(Interestingly, it was the [cleancut] [blocky-headed] [Chinese?] boyfriend who picked up the bill and paid, even before the meal finished he came up to the front counter to grab it, to head off it coming to the table and the parents paying, so, to be honest, I don't know how that affected things.)
You know, eating brown rice is awesome.
The taste isn't as good as white rice, but it really does just clear you out, like you wake up in the morning and even without coffee you need to go, and you just shit this huge pile into your toilet, like PHWOOM, and your belly feels so free and clear afterwards, for like the whole day.
Like, I made fun of old people for years for talking about fiber so much, but they knew what the f*ck they were talking about!
I remember back in late elementary school, this one teacher would always get the same gift for any teacher who was turning like forty or fifty or whatever, any age that was a big "10" one -- she would get them a nice bouquet of flowers, put into a Metamucil bottle.
The reason it's a joke, is because it's TRUE!
1) One night late at night I go to adjust the boxfan in my cottage window that looks out onto the back alley since the summer rain is picking up and starting to blow in, and as I glance out and down, there's bits of glistening moving among the oddly rich patch of dirt that sits directly below the window, and although at first I think it's a cicada hatch, I pause and look closer, and it's not, it's earthworms, just many of them, like every few inches right there underneath my window.
2) One lazy afternoon in my cottage before work, I'm glancing through a dictionary entry of the more-modern stage of the one ancient language that I've been studying intensively for the past several years, and sitting right there towards the top of the main entry of a major and well-known word is a really funky variant that directly ties into another major and well-known word from the more-ancient stage, and it's just this big simple connection that no-one ever talks about, and that clearly shows this really interesting etymological derivation that also ties into a larger and radically-underdiscussed verb form.
So, a few weeks ago, my mother said she was at a local convenience store and she happened to see a scratch-off lottery ticket with Abraham Lincoln on it, so she bought it.
"But I thought you didn't like stuff with his picture on itnull?", I was like.
"I don't like it," she was like, "But I was impulsive."
A like (later 40s) (dirty-blonde hair) (white) guy with a (blocky) (rhomboid) baby face who’s a bit country but who also has like a leather jacket on and so is also vaguely punk rock, and he’s there with his wife or girlfriend or whatever, and when I finish showing them the specials in the back pages of the menu and gesticulating to the neon-green paper insert on the next-to-last page, he reaches out and touches my hand by my wrist, just ever so briefly, and right away I know he’s bi and she knows and this is something they do sometimes, when he starts it.
…a few months ago when I was in there:
A(n older) (mustachioed) (white) guy and a (younger)
(white) woman who talk loudly and are all over each other like her occasionally sitting in his lap and whatnot, and she jokes about
him being her sugar daddy, and she takes photos of them together and when she
says something about Snapchat he wants to know who she writes to, and it’s like
their third date, and he says that on their second date he came to her house to
pick her up and her dog came out and it almost bit through his jeans when he
was getting out of the car and if he was still a state trooper he would have shot it,
and somehow she also has a young daughter, and they’re trying to decide where
to go next for food but what’s open, and the (younger) (white) (frizzy-haired)
bartender with the (pussy hat protestor) vibes blankly but not unkindly recommends some (Japanese)
restaurant a bit away, and he asks if they have good hot-and-sour soup and egg
rolls, and eventually they leave, after sucking all of the air out of the room of an otherwise-quiet brewery for a period of over forty-five minutes, where you were just forced to look at them, constantly.
(. . .)
“What the f*ck was that,” I say, like twenty seconds after they walk out the door.
“Oh my G*d I am so glad that I was not the only one thinking that,” says the (younger) (white) (frizzy-haired) bartender with the (pussy hat protestor) vibes. “Did you hear where he said he would have shot her dog, and he wanted to see her Snapchats? So many red flags!”
“And she has a daughter,” I was like. “I’m sorry, but that kid is going to be so f*cked up when she grows up, I feel sorry for her.”
