A Pinch of Humor

“Good things come to those who wait.” A great motto to live by when considering how long it’s been since I wrote a blog, or the next four years in America. In light of the recent events, I offer you humorous and slightly entertaining prose to ease your troubled mind. (Fans take heart, there is a long blog coming as soon as I finish editing.) After my long absence I’d like to wander from the beaten path of blogging and offer you some classic moments from my wonderful students. Hopefully you will find these tidbits as amusing and smile-inspiring as I did.

Between one rain storm and the next we drag the children out into the sunshine and sweltering heat to enjoy vigorous activity in the local park. They participate in a wide variety of activities including kickball, dodgeball, basketball, chasing bugs and running laps for being naughty. Second and third grade enjoy a game called capture the ball and were playing a round one sunny Taiwanese afternoon. However, Chung-Wei, our second grade space cadet, was once again intent on being the first Taiwanese child on the moon. As the children we engrossed in an epic battle, Chung-Wei was frantically hopping like a frog. No matter what game, as nineteen other kids are intent on scoring a point, it is a common occurrence for Chung-Wei to come cart wheeling by like a tumbleweed. As the crazy frog inched ever closer to me, I asked exactly what he was doing. A strange little smirk and chuckle was my only reply. A few moments later I felt something on the back of my leg and found that I was being stalked by the frog. When I felt another nudge I looked down and found Chung-Wei sniffing the back of my calf. I told him he was weird and received another strange smirk and chuckle. Upon the third sniff I played along with the madness and asked, “Does it smell like chicken?” “Nope,” he replied, “Smells like computer!” And with that Chung-Wei the smir-chuckling frog hopped into the distance.

When I am not enjoying P.E. in the park I teach a few Bible classes. One of my sections is a small group of five who either don’t learn as well in big groups or who have a very small English vocabulary. Last week we had finished our lesson and were taking prayer request. After the usual requests for amazing grades without studying, I received perhaps the strangest request in my career of working with youth. As I was about to pray, Danny blurts out, “Mr. Harris, pray for the ants in Cindy’s book bag!” Not sure how to pray, (Healing? Pregnancy? Loss of loved one? Death of the Queen?) I needed more information.
“Cindy, you have ants in your book bag?”
“What is a book bag?”
“Your backpack.”
“Oh! Yes, so many ants. Live in my dictionary.”
“They live in your dictionary?”
“Yes! I open and say, ‘Out! Out!’ and they leave, but next day, they are return.”
Baffled, but needing to finish class, I prayed an exorcism on the ants and we dismissed for lunch. I later discovered that Cindy’s dictionary is her portable electronic translator and when she opens the cover there are ants hiding inside. She denies leaving remnants of anything edible inside so apparently the ants are just city slickers who got sick of dirt.

If your one job in life was to translate a language onto t-shirts that hundreds of people would wear, wouldn’t you triple check your translation? Personally I would like to make sure my shirts said “I Love Pizza” and not “I Enjoy Rusty Eggs”. Unfortunately, t-shirt creators here in Taiwan have poor translation skills and just plain weird mottos. Although they are not entirely from my student’s shirts, the following are some of the more humorous body billboards I have experienced.

“Would you rather be amuck?”
“Blue Japan, the standard for spicy girls.”
“Sheepo. What a boring. Where is the exciting?”
“Kill the eyesores and blinking drivers.”
“Banana Chippy. A jolly monkey.”
“Big Black Pull”
“Happy Soup”
“New York I love you but you’re bringing me down.”

These are a handful of the ones I can remember at the moment. In the few months I have been here, countless chuckles have been stifled while navigating the city. Everywhere you turn there’s a shirt just waiting to make you laugh. Hopefully these few stories made you stifle a chuckle or two as well. I’m sure there will be many more blogs about the random humor of this great country! Remember, let the smir-chuckling frog eat those ants in your dictionary, unless you'd rather be amuck...