I was a quiet kid.  My mom has told me a million times how I could sit and amuse myself for hours, (“HOURS!” she says) just playing with blocks and stuff like that.  I was rarely naughty.  However, there were times when my behavior was negative, of course.  In comparing notes with others, and from my own observations, I found that the way my mom handled negative behavior was a little different and new for the time.

When I was good, she reinforced this behavior by constant comments, interest, encouragement, praise and love.  Perhaps overly-so.  She had me believing – at a pretty young age – that I was an exceptional person. 

When I was not good her response was to not respond.  She would ignore me completely.  She would act like she couldn’t hear me or see me.  In effect, if I was misbehaving, I ceased to exist.

It is interesting to me that one of the 2 or 3 “re-occurring dreams” I have had all my life is a situation where I have to tell my mom something that is extremely urgent, and in some cases she is in danger.  No matter how I try to tell her the message, she can’t hear me or see me.  I’m invisible. Out of  these dreams I often wake myself up from saying her name out loud.  I haven’t quite made sense of this yet.

At any rate, compared to what I have heard and seen and read about how other people discipline their kids, often paying attention fully to their children only through responses to negative behavior, and not giving enough acknowledgement or attention for good behavior, I think mom’s way is pretty cool.  However I have noticed an interesting effect it has had on me as an adult.

If someone in my life ignores me, often by being unresponsive to my efforts to communicate with them through the various technologies we all use these days, I freak out.  I freak out more than I should.  More than anyone else I know.  There is nothing worse to me than being ignored.  It does not take long before I have worked myself into a state of absolute crisis; fretting and wondering what I have done wrong, how I have so displeased my friend that I have caused them to act as if I do not exist in their world.  It’s traumatizing.

And yet when I look back on nearly every experience of this, I normally see that it was, indeed, an enormous waste of time, emotions and energy.  There are often completely legitimate reasons for my friends’ actions, there is nothing personal, there has been no transgression committed by myself or my friend.  It’s just normal life.

But what it boils down to - to over-simplify, really – is me in a state of panic, in my childhood state of mind, thinking, “I am an awesome person…how could you possibly ignore me?!”

        Now, I need to say that I realize my attitude about this has been shaped by living here, and may seem callous.  I will also say that I am not a bad motorcycle driver.  In fact I have been told I am a very good driver. I take some risks, yes, but only because I know that I am skilled enough to do so, and I think I’ve developed that sort of 6^th sense you have to develop here to predict what the other drivers will do. When people arrive here from the western world they think the Thais drive crazy.  This is untrue and relative.  The Thais drive like they have to to drive in Thailand.  This is also how I have had to re-learn to drive.

        When I realize my passengers are doing this uptight, intense and fearful staring over my shoulder, I find myself slightly irritated, and wish they would simply trust me and so be able to take in all the scenes along the road instead of completely shutting them out.  You can learn more about Thailand looking around from the back of a motorbike than if you traveled through 5 different provinces by bus, I think.  Of course, this is easy for me to say.

        During T’s visit, I realized for a long time that she was doing this before I said anything about it. T turned 7 months pregnant while she was here.

        Perhaps a bit compulsively, and perhaps a bit insensitively, I said,

          “You need to try and just trust my driving.  You’ll see a lot more of Thailand if you look around while we’re on the road.”

          “I know… I would …except that I have this precious cargo,” she said.

          “Yeah, I know. And I’m sure I would feel the same way if I were pregnant.  But think of it this way:  I don’t wanna die today either.  And you’re no more likely to get in an accident than any other pregnant Thai on the back of a motorcycle, and believe me, there are plenty”

       She argued that she figured if she was paying attention to the road she would be prepared for the impact of an accident, and she could prevent a more serious injury than if she were not.  In my experience accidents usually happen so fast that no one has time to prepare for it, but I couldn’t blame her for thinking it might make a difference.  I’m sure in a way she had to somehow convince herself that she might be able to have some semblance of control to even allow herself and her 7 month old fetus to board my vehicle in the first place. I can understand that.

        At the same time, I must confess I busted out in a huge grin the day that T’s trust in Thai roads progressed from initially refusing to drink an iced coffee while on my bike (leaving it to melt and get all watery in my basket on our way to the beach – while I of course drove one-handed and drank mine immediately), saying she needed to have her hands free in case we fell, to happily slurping a strawberry shake while we sped along the road the week before she left.  And I knew she’d relaxed a bit because she would say things about the stuff she saw by the roadside.

        I am also very aware that I have become slightly addicted to speed (when I am passengerless) in this country.  It is one of my favorite natural highs.  With all respects and apologies to my mother and closest friends and relatives who may fear I am cruising  toward certain death, I have to take pleasure in the simple everyday things in my life here and this is certainly one of them.  I will add even more horror (I’m truly sorry) to this by saying that sometimes I also wear my iPod on full volume, and no helmet.  We all have to die sometime.  This does not mean I don’t value life; it means that I choose to enjoy it in my own ways despite the risks.  Some people shoot heroin…I drive the way I want to, because no one here is ever going say I shouldn’t, and because I can’t ever do that in the states.

        Recently I had 4 friends over at my house.  One of them was G, a  Thai filmmaker.  I went inside my house for a moment and tried to plug in a light fixture which didn’t work properly and in grabbing the fixture I received a hefty electric shock.  This is not the first nor will be the last time, I am sure; I and lots of my friends have experienced the same sort of shocking experience in Thailand.  I came back out to the patio and asked G:  isn’t there some kind of organization in Thailand whose job it is to test electrical appliances for safety? So that people don’t drop dead left and right from being electrocuted?

        She said something like, “No…Thai lives aren’t worth that much.”

        Now… G’s English is pretty damn good.  I don’t know if this would have come off sounding the same way in Thai, maybe it came off sounding a little less sensitive in English, but I’m pretty sure all of us foreigners felt something like shock in what her idea expressed. 

        I won’t even get started on the absolute lack of seatbelt and carseat laws here.  A 6-month-old baby held on the hip of a woman on the back of a motorcycle driven by her husband…do you really think they value the lives of their children less than we do?  I doubt it.  So how can a whole country be so “careless?”  Is it even carelessness?  You tell me. I think about this type of shit all the time.

         But think about this:  who are we (westerners) to think we can make everything a pain in the ass so we can supposedly prevent our inevitable demise?  How much more stressed out are we on a day-to-day basis trying to control when and how  we die…and is it worth it?  This concept was re-stated by others as well.

        I had a hoopdance/fire show in the outskirts of Bangkok this weekend.  The morning after the show I asked an American friend of mine about my Thai fellow fire-performer’s drinking habits.  Before the show he had drunk a bit more than usual, and was messing some of his stunts because of it.  Not really seriously, but he did sustain a burn on his face, and more importantly there’s a 10-year-old kid involved in his act who could have potentially been hurt because of his mistakes.  When I complained of this, this American friend – who’s lived here 30 years - said something like, “I know…but just relax.  See…Thai people don’t see life in quite the same way as we do.  It takes quite a few years here to really cement the concept in your brain that most Thai people see their bodies as these temporary vehicles we’re given to bump around in for a limited time.  Sometimes people seem to act as though these are pretty expendable.  Not to the point where they are self-destructive…but to the point that they’re able to live without this constant fear and paranoia that we grow up with in the west.”

        Another example: Most parents in the west are well-versed in the concept of typical teenage behavior and rebellion. I would imagine you’d have to be, in order to survive this period without killing your own child.  My Thai supervisor/friend and I were talking about the statistics involving fatal traffic accidents, and the fact that a lot of them involve teenage boys. 

          “Well, that makes sense,” I said, “Teenagers drive like idiots all over the world, I’d assume.  Part of it is probably inexperience, but part of it is probably because they think they’re invincible.”

          “What?”

          I talked about the whole youth invincibility/immortality concept with him that my mom explained to me a long time ago, following my explanation with the always-self-dooming phrase (especially across cultures), “Everyone knows that!”

        Carrie, you jackass.  Clearly, everyone does NOT know that.  This highly educated father of two adult sons didn’t know that.  And why? Is it because the concept doesn’t apply to Thais? Or because Thai people don’t read parenting books?  How could I ever pretend to know?

        No one can tell me the value of my own life except me.  It seems it would be a pretty important concept to be clear on, but in balancing between cultures, the ideas become blurry and changeable, and it’s up to me to decide how I feel about it, day by day…and that’s one of the things I like about living on the other side of the world.

Traditionally, Haiku was written by Japanese poets about nature. So we started the exercise by making some word “banks.” We made one word bank of one-syllable words, trying to include connective words, pronouns, nouns, verbs and adjectives. I had them brainstorm and shout out words, but tried to keep the subject matter nature-based. Then we made another word-bank of two-syllable words. I gave them the structure to use. Then I left them to it.

I got really encouraged and excited whenever I looked up from my work and saw them all deep in concentration, looking off into space thoughtfully, mouthing words to themselves and counting syllables on fingers.  Then they started coming up to me and showing their poems to me to check if they’d gotten it right.  This enthusiasm was unprecedented.

Here are some of my favorites:

Sheep sleep under a tree

That sheep eat grass every day

In night they live field

I love my mother

And I love my old brother

I love family

A girl likes to swim

On a beautiful Sunday

She loves it so much

Frog eats the insect

It say “ob-ob” and jumping

Say loud when raining

I go to the sea

I swim with my family

And happy on sand

A frog have a green

I like it when swimming

It live in river

I go to Cha-Am

I swim with my grandmother

We are very fun

I love is snow

It’s cool I say “Ah ya ya”

Good luck snowing

It is a haiku

My teacher is beautiful

My nickname is Jane

I can go my home

I meet father and mother

I meet they so mush (yes, she did write “mush.”)

Haiku love river

Haiku have 4 leg live June

Haiku have big eye

My father handsome

My mother beautifully

I like badminton

(A Short Quick Journey Back To Junior High.)

June 17, 2010

 It took me by surprise. I hadn’t heard that voice in quite a while. In this case, the voice of God was that of a large, moody 42-year-old black man from Indiana. It was unmistakably my old friend Jack. Jack was killed in 2004 in a car accident. He was one of my most trusted friends (and I his), my musical mentor, my motivator, and often my harshest critic. He’d tell it like it is. He wouldn’t waste time putting things gently, he’d just say what he thought you needed to hear…especially if you didn’t want to hear it.

“Just DO what the fuck you SAY you’re gonna do,” was one of my favorites. Another was, “YOU are your worst enemy.” And, “What’s your six-month-plan, Carrie?”

Yesterday I heard his voice telling me I’d wasted enough time focusing on other people besides myself, and this book was not going to get written by anyone but me. Why did I think of God, even though I clearly recognized Jack’s voice? Did I need to feel that the command came from such a lofty place that I dare not disobey? That statement alone shows how hokey my very concept of the word God can still be sometimes. But my response was to think of Jack being channeled through the very ruler of the heavens, straight into my noodle.

It seemed appropriate enough. I trust Jack. I’m not sure if I trust God. I don’t know God well enough yet.

This morning I opened my e-mail and there is a message from Libby, my friend and fellow Jack-disciple. Yesterday was the 6 year anniversary of the accident. Of course I’d completely forgotten. She sends a reminder to all his closest friends every year. If I were at home I would meet her in the stunning Lakewood Cemetery, she’d bring purple flowers, I’d scrub the headstone with my various cleaning supplies, she’d say a few words, I’d do a headstand, and then we’d hop in our cars and go to the nearby (and now demolished) Uptown Grill for a huge breakfast and a Bloody Mary.

But this year I am here, where there are no cemeteries, no Uptown Grills, and certainly no Bloody Marys. Instead, I was clearly reminded of Jack, six years to the day after he left us, by Jack himself, making me think he is the voice of God, which probably made him smile.

“FFFFFFFFFUCK!”  

To which they always replied with a very British, “Oh, dear.”

Despite the pain, I had so much adrenaline rushing through me, and was so giddy and excited, and they were so short and surprisingly DO-able, that they almost seemed…fun.

I have no doubt, however, that if labor had progressed and gotten to the pushing and birthing stage, I would not likely be calling it “fun” now.

A very uncomfortable gloved-fingered cervix check revealed that I was dilated to about 5 centimeters. Things got a little more rushed after that. I was not to eat or drink anything till the surgery, starting many hours beforehand, so I kept getting thirstier and rinsing my mouth out with water. This annoying, intense thirst is actually one of the things I remember most vividly from the whole experience. It was so severe by the time they started the c-section that I remember (in my very drugged, dopey state) only a few seconds passing between hearing Charlie’s first cry, and saying, “Right. Good. He’s okay. Can I have my ice chips now??”

Jackie looks so different and almost regal with her hair up and off her face, like an African queen.  The surgical cap she had to wear in the operating room hid all her hair (which is in 4 or 5 inch dreads, at the moment) beneath it, and I remember looking at her face and how beautiful and excited she looked.  She held my hand in hers, and the sheet was raised in front of my face (even though I requested that it not be), and I felt the pulling and tugging they had said I would feel, and heard Jackie saying, “Ohhhh, Carrie!  There he is!!”  I’m so glad I can at least remember what her voice sounded like at that moment.

They were playing some music, slightly cheesy 80s music, as I recall.  I remember thinking the song that was playing at the moment Charlie came out was funny and somehow appropriate.  Then I tried very hard to secure the name of that song in my memory so I could write about it later.  But…I can’t remember it.  This is one of those examples of how my friends had a point when they said a c-cestion, with all the drugs involved, was a bad idea.  But I won’t dwell on that anymore.

Then I heard the nurse at my head, who was filming the birth, say, “What does this flashing picture of a battery with a line through it mean?” We ended up catching less than 2 seconds of the actual birth before the camera died. Two seconds of Charlie’s goo-covered head being pulled up and out, and then…blackness.  Damn technology. Oh well.

I didn’t cry. I was too out-of-it.  I looked over to my right and saw them wiping him off and wrapping him up, handing him to Jackie as planned, and didn’t even see if she cried, but she must have.  What an unbelievable moment it must have been for her, finally seeing her baby, and she was entirely clear-headed to remember it, unlike me.  But this was kind of why I insisted on a C-section; this was HER moment, probably one of the most important in her life.  It meant something totally different to me, and don’t really mind that I was a bit whacked-out.  But damn, I wish I could remember what that song was.

She brought him over to me, but after being reassured that everything about him was okay, I shooed her out of the room to bring him to Tim.  I didn’t even really feel the need to touch him.

I wound up chatting groggily with one of the male nurses about Plymouth and the housing market, asking – no, begging - repeatedly for ice, and for permission to take a nap. I was finally rewarded for my whining with a cup full of heart-shaped ice cubes, and I could not recall ever feeling so physically relieved and orally satisfied. EVER. In the recovery room, Jax and Tim sat right there by my bed-on-wheels holding Charlie – who was already eating, I think – and beaming. They showed him to me, and I looked closer this time.  He looked like a typical newborn a few minutes out of the womb: red, scrunched, and pretty annoyed.  I loved seeing him and hearing him squawk.  A voice, finally, to go with the bodily presence!  But I would not hold him… my arms were trembling too much, an after-effect of the anesthesia, and I thought I might drop him. I didn’t feel very emotional, except feeling incredible gratitude that he was healthy and that I had my heart-shaped ice cubes.

The next day Simone from Aberdeen listened to me gripe about how non-nutritious the food served for breakfast was. She gave me a sandwich for lunch, placing it on the bed table with a flourish, adding proudly in her thick Scottish brogue, “And I even had them make it with br-r-r-r-own br-r-r-r-ead!”

B (my ex-spouse) and I got into a debate recently because we were talking about hooping (which – he insists – is a term that hula hoopers unfairly ripped off from basketball players), and he was describing a girl who he would always see these past few summers around Uptown and Lake Calhoun, hula hooping. After asking a few questions I figured out exactly who he was talking about. I know her. She was one of my inspirations to try hooping. He said she seemed like a “freak” and was walking around in these super skimpy, cutesy outfits and dancing with her hula hoop, “trying to get attention.” That last part really, REALLY hit a nerve with me, with all the agonizing I do about the questionable image I present by choosing to hula hoop in public in a smallish Asian town.

“Okay,” I said, “So, B, you’re good at writing lyrics and rapping, and you love it, so you get up on a stage in front of hundreds of people as often as possible to show your talent and entertain them and hopefully inspire them, and be inspired to get better at what you do, right?”

“Yeah?”

“So why the f-ck couldn’t she simply be doing the same thing with a different form of creative expression?! Because it’s sexy? Oh, GOD, you can’t possibly be doing something that could be interpreted as sexy unless you’re a promiscuous, sexual attention-craving freak, right?”

Issues.

Issue, issues, issues. We all have them. All kinds of different people, for all kinds of different reasons.

(To B’s credit, at the end of our discussion he admitted I had opened his eyes a bit and he understood better that it’s a form of performance art, which he hadn’t realized.)

This woman, I told him, is an older (like, OUR age), single mom. She is – as far as I know – THE pioneer hooper in Minneapolis. She inspired my friends to learn hooping, and they in turn inspired dozens of others, including me. She teaches hooping for a living. She supports herself with it, and the reason she is so good is because she has dedicated a HUGE portion of her life and her time and her energy to getting better and better. To be one of the best. Why should she not have just as much of a right to show her talent to others as you do? Because she’s not selling tickets? Because she likes to dress sexy when she does it? Because her openess made you feel weird or embarrassed?

I had a bit of a freak-out session, but I calmed down. It’s just my own internal struggle, lately.   A performance-identity-crisis, or sorts.

I tried hooping at first because my friend Kara, who I idolize and adore, was doing it non-stop. Just like everyone else, the only thing I did at first was hoop around my waist and try to keep it from falling to the ground as long as possible. The first time I tried it at one of the notorious Kingman Studio parties, in front of people, I was feeling out of place and insecure. It was a couple years ago and I was just starting to be able to go out and really socialize again after my divorce, but still felt really fragile and vulnerable, and was in need of a social-lubricant/protectant other than alcohol.

I hooped with one of Kara’s practice hoops out on the dance floor, experimenting with timing my movements to the music the DJ was spinning, and discovered I could sort of dance and hoop at at the same time. Then a guy approached me.  He was wasted. I didn’t want to talk to him. I kept hooping and in doing so, I created this physical barrier of space between us. I couldn’t hear him over the music, from the distance the barrier created, and I just smiled benignly at him and kept hooping.

Eventually the unwelcome jackass stepped into the orbit zone so I could hear him talk, and knocked the hoop out of the air. I was irritated by this, because I’d had a nice rhythm going. But I picked up the hoop, handed it to him, smiled and made a gesture that said, “Well, you knocked it down so you go ahead and try it now!” Of course, just like nearly every straight guy, he tried it about three times, felt embarrassed and silly, and handed it back to me.  Perfect.

I had discovered a way to carve out my own little space bubble when I wanted a safe place to enjoy the party.

A little time went by and I was asked to model at a fashion show in the warehouse district. After modeling the dresses, both Kara (who’d been hired to hoop and dance) and Brant encouraged me to hoop, telling me (when I hesitated) that even though I didn’t really know any “tricks” I had a sense of the music and timing (from DJing, etc.) that made my simple waist-hooping fun to watch.

Their encouragement meant so much to me. I was almost instantly suspicious, because it seemed like too much encouragement, but this was during that precious time when we were all becoming very close friends and sort of falling in love with each others’ energy. They knew my past and knew my present and must have felt that it was really important to encourage this new potential form of creative expression. And it was a crucial time. I really needed it.

A year later I was performing with Kara and Nicole, going to grueling and (for me) nerve wracking practice sessions at the studio. They were both so much more experienced as dancers, learned new moves so much faster, were so much more graceful and more sexy than I was. My own nerves and comparisons to them severely hindered my progress.

I know that now because as soon as I started hooping again after my pregnancy (once my waist disappeared at 5 months, I had to stop, really), which was just after arriving in Thailand, I improved by leaps and bounds I hadn’t thought myself capable of. Why? Because I was the only one doing it. I had no one to compare myself to but myself. I was already the best, in my own little world, and I could only get better.

At the same time, I was also  becoming  addicted to the workout it provided. It got my heart rate somewhere close to 165 at its highest point, I’m guessing, and worked out every inch of my body. Best of all, it was giving me a path to experiencing my precious Dubstep music in a physical way, once again, now that I’d left the Dubstep scene in rainy England far behind.

Things seem balanced, strong,  revolving and evolving when I look toward my future with hoop dancing.  I’ve never felt this about any physical activity before, and I am incredibly grateful for it.

It was 95 degrees out that day and I cleaned the filthy farmhouse inside and outside non-stop for 6 hours. Every bit of my clothing and body were dripping with salty sweat when I finally got in the shower. As I was showering I realized something that could be a slight problem in having invited people over for an early supper. “Oh my God! I don’t have an effing KITCHEN!”

Yeah. This was a pretty significant glitch.

But I had an idea. I got dressed and rode my motorbike to a little soup-shack on the side of the road about a quarter mile away. This soup is incredibly yummy. I could just order 4 servings of soup in plastic bags and dump them in bowls. This is how Thai mom gets most of her food and feeds the family. But when I got there, soup-lady was sitting in her little 8 inch high stool, washing dishes in plastic tubs. Not a good sign. She smiled that famous Thai smile and said she was sorry, but already closed for the day. The last time this happened Logan and I showed up, ravenous and craving her soup, at 5:00 p.m. and she said, with a smile, that she closes shop at 5. It was 4:25 p.m.

So I zipped over to the big house and tried to explain to Thai mom that I needed her to take me to wherever she buys prepared food, close to home, since I did not have time to drive into town. I got on the back of her bike and we zipped over to the street behind our neighborhood that has food carts all along the shoulder. I headed right for the lady selling little snacky things on sticks, she had fried chicken satay and little hard-boiled quail-eggs wrapped in crunchy wonton shells. I bought enough for 4 people and went to see what Thai mom was buying. Raw ground pork? Raw vegetables? Raw shrimp? Bean curd? What…you are seriously going to make us a pot of home-made soup? I told her no, she doesn’t have to do that…we can find more prepared food to buy.

“Mai pen rai! Mai pen rai!” She chirps, smiling. (“It’s not a problem!”) She is loving this. Her strange, adopted American daughter is having her first big-girl gathering in her new house, and has totally messed up in planning for feeding her guests. She knows I want to take good care of my precious 4 guests and she knows why. Thai Mom is saving the day. Go, Thai mom.

After a few more obligatory protests I climb back on her bike and we head home. My friends were there when I got back. We spent a while opening beers, corking wine, getting some dishes together and chatting, oohing and ahhing about the state of my house in comparison to its original, derelict, barnlike state, which they had seen for themselves. Then I remembered Thai mom was cooking soup, and left my guests in the house while I walked down the dirt road and into mom’s kitchen to check on the progress.

This moment was a turning point in my love affair with my new home, culture, and family. When I got to her kitchen, mom said the soup was already done, and held up a big spoon for me to sip off of to tell her if it tasted good. The pink light of the sunset was all over the trees and the spirit house right outside the waist-high wall around the indoor/outdoor kitchen. She told me to be careful, it’s hot, and I thought, “Wow…I haven’t even had a mommish moment like this with my OWN mom,” since my own mom doesn’t really like to cook. The soup was amazing, and she sent me packing with the hot metal pot which she put on a dishtowel inside a little miniature plastic laundry basket.

I spent the next few hours blissfully in my new-old house, with my favorite music playing and the breeze blowing through the open windows and my new friends happily slurping soup made by my Thai mom, who sometimes seems to love me like her own daughter.

This is a classic example of “the real” Thailand, as I’ve experienced it:  something is made more stressful by the lack of modern conveniences that Americans take for granted, and at the same time is cancelled out by something that makes it less stressful, like a kindness shown by someone that helps you when you need it most.

I had gone to the athletic center in hopes of finding my “hoop ladies” who gather there at 6 P.M. almost every night, because I needed to buy another hula hoop. But it had just rained, and none of my hoopsters were around. So instead, I climbed to the top tier of the bleachers that surround the soccer field and watched the sunset, which was amazing, thanks to the to the rain-clouds. This was when I had my thoughts about fears. Sunsets getcha thinkin’ sometimes…

On the ride home, after dark, I stopped to get groceries. I had small bag and one large, the small one I hung on the left handlebar of my motorbike and the large one I strapped into my basket with a bungee cord, which blocked my headlight. This was not a problem as I drove on the big, well-lit streets nearer to civilization, until – just a quarter-mile from home – I turned on to a side street that had no streetlights. I realized I could see nothing in my path and slowed down to remove the bungee and take the big bag out of the basket, and that was when I heard a pissed-off sounding dog barking at me about 15 feet away, from the sound of it. The barking moved closer and I panicked, without removing the bag from the basket, I gunned the bike and charged blindly in front of me. I could see where the small road turned right onto a bigger one, about 100 meters ahead, but anything could have been in my path and I wouldn’t have seen it.

So that was scary-as-hell-moment-number-one.

After turning right on to the big road, I thought I was finally safe to stop the bike along the shoulder and move the bag so I could see the road in front of me. I had only about three blocks left to go before I was home.

Wrong. On to scary-as-hell-moment-number-two. Again, as soon as I slowed the bike to a stop and started messing with the bungee, I heard another dog to my right. I ignored it at first, until I heard the sound of claws running over concrete. This dog was going to take a chunk out of me if I didn’t move fast. (I learned later from several Thai that dogs love a chase, and rather than running away you should turn and face them head on, but this was blind fear and gut reaction here). I made the choice between a dog bite and a messy accident. When I chose the risk of accident, I took my chances of running my motorcycle, with me on it, into one of the canals that ran along either side of the road, or missing my turn – which was very close – or running blindly into any other object, creature or vehicle I could not see or who could not see me.

This was the most scared I have been in at least 8 years. I actually screamed. People do not scream in Thailand. I’m pretty sure Thais don’t even scream in situations much worse than this, but whatever; I’m not Thai. Fuck it; I screamed like a little kid.

I cranked the accelerator handle erratically and swerved around, trying desperately to see the painted line on the road that marked where the shoulder was, trying to get my bearings as I wasn’t even sure of which side of the rode I was on, at one point, aware that there was traffic approaching in the distance from both directions, before finally, miraculously, spotting my dirt road and taking a right. That second dog had given up the chase just 20 feet before the turn.

I have never been so glad to see Papi, the neighborhood dog, running beside my motorbike, escorting me to my gate, which I have also never been so glad to see. I was still shaking.

Two lessons learned: Never block your headlight with something that can’t be removed quickly,(this would seem to be common sense, would it not?) and never run from dogs when they chase you. Turn and face them.

And a reluctant third lesson:  I still have some pretty healthy fears. That’s what I get for thinking, “gee I’m so brave.”  The higher the height, the harder the fall.  The universe found a way to put my ego in check.

…Learnin’…learnin’…learnin’….

For example (and I have since learned not to bother with this), I am often annoyed by people on or in their vehicles who leave their turn signals on. I used to do this in the states and I don’t know if it ever worked, but I’d pass the offending vehicle and hold up my hand, and open and close my fist at the driver, like at the same speed as a blinker. I guess I don’t know if it ever worked because I usually drove on ahead without looking back, feeling as though I had done some good in the world. (?!)

At any rate, I tried this recently on the road to my school. As I passed the guy on his motorbike, I made the “Your Blinker’s On, Jackass” signal with my left hand near my own turn signal, to show him his left blinker was on. It only occurred to me, much later, that this poor man could very well have been thinking anything BUT what I’d intended to convey, for example, “Please grab my left butt cheek.”

Another example was when my two new, old, nosy neighbor ladies wandered into my rental house on one of the first days I spent cleaning it. I was exhausted and covered in sweat. I had just spent about 2 hours working my way from one end of the upstairs to the other, shoving a long Thai army knife through the gaps in all the floorboards, pushing out the 12-years-worth of dust and debris that had collected between them. I was very proud of myself for having completed such a tedious chore and could now start sweeping up all the crap that had fallen through to the concrete floor of the main level. Because they were standing around on that floor, chatting in Thai between the two of them and looking about as if to note what cleaning I had accomplished, I was anxious to let them know I had, in fact, been very productive that morning.

I started from the beginning of the sentence in my mind, and made gestures to symbolize the long knife I had used, which was upstairs and out of sight. Then I pointed upstairs, followed by a downward whooshing motion showing that all the dirt had fallen onto the floor at our feet and I was about to sweep it up. They looked at me with partly horrified, partly baffled expressions on their faces. Because I had foolishly included the motion of stabbing myself in order to clearly convey the word “knife,” and there is no backspace or delete in charades, they very well may have been thinking I had just said something like, “I am going to commit suicide by way of Hari-Kari in the upstairs level of this house, and someone will have to clean up the blood that oozes through the floor.”