TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 176

[Tobie Shapiro]

March 11, 20000000007


Dear Lives of the Parties,

	I have successfully sprung my clocks 
forward an hour, and am jet lagged.  One measly 
hour in the morning does make a difference.  I 
got to bed late.  We went out to a Korean 
restaurant last night, our first time.  The menu 
was lengthy, and we didn't know what anything 
meant.  I explained to the waitress that this was 
our first time, and we wanted some 
recommendations, but that she should regard us as 
adventurous, not honkies.  We wanted the real 
thing.   What did I do that for?  How can she 
regard us as anything but what we look like, and 
that's honkies.  I could tell she was steering us 
toward tame.  I pointed something out under, 
"Appetizers," a pickled hot fish dish.  She tried 
to get me to order something else.  Tried to 
convince me that it was strange tasting, and that 
I probably wouldn't like it.  That was enough to 
convince me.  Bring the dish.  Yes, I want that! 
She reluctantly wrote it down.  It turned out to 
be my favourite dish.  Hot as hell, and an 
interesting texture, delicious, plus it was too 
hot for everyone else, so I got to eat the whole 
thing.  The waitress did not register any 
surprise when she cleared off the empty plate. 
We also ordered sauteed intestines.  I love guts. 
It was very very good.  I think the waitress gave 
up on recommending things.  We were too unruly. 
But we tip big.  She knew we'd be back.  Along 
with the meal, they bring a dozen or so tiny 
dishes of appetizers, everything from kim chee to 
agar agar to dried sweet tiny fish.  And they 
brought each of us a small bowl of a cold kim 
chee soup with noodles.  I drank mine and my 
mother's because it was too hot for her.  Then 
Feyna presented hers to me.  They were small 
bowls, otherwise I couldn't have polished them 
all off, but I did, with relish.

	During the meal, Meyshe disappeared into 
the men's room and didn't come out for the 
longest time.  After what seemed like half an 
hour, I excused myself to go look for him.  I 
stood outside the men's room door calling his 
name.  No answer.  I called louder.  Still no 
answer.  I called louder, stood nearer the door. 
No answer.  I figured he was making his own 
autistic noises in there and couldn't hear me, so 
I gave up.  I went back to the table without 
having found him.  He remained AWOL for a long 
time after my return, and I finally got up to go 
look for him again.  I stood outside the bathroom 
door yelling his name.  No answer.  No answer. 
So I gave up again and headed back to the table. 
On my way, I saw Meyshe pacing toward me from the 
little anteroom where they keep the Korean 
community newspapers, a table and some chairs for 
people waiting.  He'd been in there the whole 
time, looking at the Korean papers.  I told him 
I'd been looking for him in the wrong place.  He 
came back to the table, finding it funny that I'd 
been standing outside the gentlemen's room 
shouting out his name.  In fact everyone found 
that amusing.

	Except me.





                                  üüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüü
                                  øØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØø
 
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————



Pachyderm House


	At the San Francisco zoo, there  is a 
whole house reserved for the elephants, 
hippopotomi, and rhinoceroses.  At least there 
was the Pachyderm House when I was little.  The 
animals had both an indoor and outdoor area.  The 
hippos had a lake to wallow and swim in that 
spanned the indoor and outdoor sections of their 
home.  So as human beings, we could watch the 
pachyderms by strolling outside and observing 
them in the open air, and if they were feeling 
reclusive, or if it were raining, we could all go 
inside and view them from the sheltered home of 
big big beasts.  I loved visiting the hippos. 
They were so outlandish, so extreme, so smooth 
skinned, so lumbering and clumsy out of the water 
and so graceful and demure in it.  They'd glide 
along with their eyes and snouts emergent, the 
rest of them submerged.  They looked out at the 
gawking humans with a calm leisurely mien, their 
ears rotating like radar discs, their mouths 
opening every once in a while to take in a peanut 
or a yawn.  The insides of their mouths were 
cavernous, large enough for a child to stand in, 
and that is what I imagined as I stood there with 
my mother and grandmother on that fateful day.

	We must have been visiting from Silver 
Spring, Maryland, so that would make me five 
years old, innocent, impressionable.  We were 
indoors, surrounded by the enormous animals.  And 
there were other zoo goers milling about studying 
the  pachyderms' habits and gestures.  We were 
looking at the rhinoceroses who were  on the 
opposite side of Pachyderm House.  The rhinos 
were mean looking, but their motions were slow. 
They looked like they were composed of large 
tectonic plates, all fitting under and over each 
other, guarding their joints and shielding them 
in general from any predator who got any stupid 
ideas about making lunch out of them.  They 
seemed completely impenetrable, a Brinks truck on 
four legs with a dangerous horn out front, ready 
to impale anything it took a dislike to.

	I turned around to see the hippos across 
the room.  There was one who had risen out of the 
water and was backed up against the protective 
railing that kept them in and us out.  In front 
of the exhibit was a gaggle of proper ladies, all 
wearing furs that swept to the ground, and hats 
nailed to their shellacked coifs at various 
angles.  They wore gloves, too, and clutched 
their purses in their gloved hands.  They were an 
entire exhibit themselves, emblems of the 1950s, 
examples of San Francisco's upstanding upper 
class.  They were pointing and commenting while 
the fat hippopotamus, its huge rump glistening in 
the light, stood perfectly still, ass to the 
ladies.

	At the time, I was watching the ladies 
more than the hippo.  The hippo was motionless, 
but the flock of ladies was active, their high 
heels clicking on the marble floor, their heads 
bobbing as they tittered and chattered about the 
hippo's rude showing of its back to them.

	"Pardon me, ladies."

	Then my attention switched to the 
hippopotamus, because its tail was in motion. 
Its tail was in fact rotating like a fan.  Whip, 
whip, whip, whip.  It created a windmill.

	"Isn't that clever!"

	Then from the invisible, embedded hole in 
the hippo's arse extruded a gigantic log of hippo 
excrement.  It hit the fan and sprayed everything 
within fifteen feet with a warm layer or two.  It 
flung out to the sides, and behind it, painting 
the whole area with a dark brown, clumpy bowel 
movement, everywhere a thorough coat.  The 
tittering ladies shrieked and protected their 
faces with their white gloved hands.  Hats flew 
off, they fell out of their pointy shoes.  They 
ducked, but they could not hide.  They and their 
impressive fur coats were sprayed miserably.

	And then, there was the stench.  The 
women ran out of the pachyderm house and off down 
the path to the nearest cosmetic first aid 
station.  The hippopotamus finished its job and 
slid back into the water, yawning for peanuts.



                                  üüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüü
                                  øØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØøØø
 
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net