On the other hand, I was a bit reluctant to have a stranger in the house. I mean, I like my privacy. When you have a stranger in the house you have to close the door before you can do a prostate self-examination. Who can remember to do that every time? Not me.
But we figured we could handle this because we had had a visitor from abroad before. When Karen and I lived in Japan back in ‘86, we made a lot of friends. One of the nicest was Mr. M, a very important executive who Karen tutored. He was, and is, a refined and charming man and whenever he comes to Vancouver we have dinner with him. Anyway, he asked us if his daughter Ritsiko could come and stay with us for a short while. Hey, no prob! Might be fun for the boys, and it would mean that the next time one of us was in Japan, we could expect a return favour from Mr. M. Why not?
Well I found out at the airport when I went to pick her up. Here come a stream of excited tourists and students, straight from Tokyo and thrilled to be in Canada, and then comes Ritsiko. Hang-dog posture, a frightened, furtive look on her face, a face that looks like it was borrowed from a disaffected mule – her whole attitude screamed "I am a socially inept geek who has been sent away by my father because he’s sick of me." Her attitude quickly manifest itself in action, or should I say, inaction. This girl (well, woman, she was in her early 20s) did not want to go out, see anything, do anything, eat anything that was not Japanese, look at anything that was not from her suitcase, or interact with the world in any way. Although her father wanted her to learn a bit of English, tutoring her was like trying to teach a cat to smile. She didn’t have the necessary muscles. She knew one sentence of English when she got off the plane and the same sentence when she got back on three weeks later. That sentence was "Hello my name is Ritsiko." But she didn’t even say that well. Here, try this experiment: open your mouth just a little bit, as little as you can without having your lips touch. Now, without moving your lips, or any other facial muscle, say in a quick, utterly uninflected monotone, "hellomynameisritsiko." There you go. Three weeks in Canada with two English professors.
After Ritsuko, we figured we could handle anyone, but Karen had some ground rules. She said that she only wanted women homestay students. She had enough men in the household, thank you very much, and wasn’t about to throw more testosterone in the soup. Okay. Fine. You want to have a parade of young women going through our the house, who am I to say no? Women from exotic countries, some of which have very different and more liberal notions of sexual behaviour than our own? Okay, twist my arm. But only cause I love you.
Our first homestay girl was called Kiyomi. Now, the first thing to note about her was, well, she was a babe. Mega-babe. Seriously. Picking her up at the airport turned into a rock video because she had the sort of looks that can change an environment. Picture this: I’m standing in the airport terminal where all the people on international flights exit. I’ve got a sign with Kiyomi’s last name on it. Here comes a bevy of people, hundreds, obviously just in from Tokyo. I stand there and stand there, and my mind begins to wander as the wait lengthens. Then I notice a change in the room: this huge barn of a terminal is suddenly focussed on one thing, one person. I look over and here she comes, alone, down the entryway, this oriental uber-babe, walking, it seemed, in sinuous slow motion, her long hair undulating in some impossible wind. She keeps walking, dragging the focus of the crowds with her, towards me, this sign-toting goober, who is beginning to think he’s fallen asleep and is dreaming. But no, she walks right up to me and, in a breathy demure voice, says, "Hello Budra-san. I am Kiyomi. I have come to Canada to learn the art of pleasing middle-aged men. Me love you long time."
Okay. She didn’t say that. That was a joke. Arf arf. The kinda joke we do not share with my wife. Or anyone who knows her. Got it? A joke.
But do you want to know the really sad thing about having a young mega-babe in the house? Instead of feeling some constant sexual frisson in the air, all I felt was (I shudder to type it) paternal. How fucking sad it that? How old am I??
The other thing about Kiyomi is that she was also born without a brain. As far as Karen and I could tell, the only thing that she would do during the day was sit in her room and look at herself in the mirror. She was not, I assure you, pondering the secrets of identity. No, she was staring at her own beautiful vacuous face in moronic fascination, constantly discovering and then forgetting only to rediscover again its basic physiognomy: "Look! I have a nose! And an ear! No, wait, I have another ear on the other side! And a nose!"
I eventually bought a small TV for her room so she’d have something else to look at. Didn’t really work. She put the mirror on top of the TV so she could watch herself watching TV, or maybe so the TV could watch her looking at herself. I don’t know.
After staying with us a few months, she told us that she no longer wanted full board. She just wanted breakfast. Hey, no prob. Brekkie it is. But after about a week I went into the basement to get something out of the freezer and discovered that a bag of frozen rhubarb and strawberries that Karen had bought to make a pie with was ripped open at one end, and all the strawberries were missing. Go figure: instead of going out for lunch, Kiyomi was sitting in her room sucking on pilfered frozen strawberries. I took out that bag and replaced it with a big bag of chicken livers.
After Kiyomi came a Korean girl whose name I can’t remember but whom we called Harumph. She had been sent here by her father to see (dig it) if Canada was a safe enough place to send his son. Get it? The boy, who is the family god, can’t go abroad until her sister is sent as a kind of mineshaft canary to check out the environment. So she came here under duress. She had no desire to be here. She hated Canada, hated Canadian food, people, air, water, and sunlight. As you can imagine, this made for a very happy visit. Fine. I can understand her resentment, but it did get a bit boring to hear (when she deigned to talk to us) about how everything in Canada is inferior to the glories of Korea. Of course. Why, Canada doesn’t have anywhere near as many fine dog butchers as they have in Korea. And try to get a good bowl of dog soup in this country.
But most of the time Harumph just sat in her room, which is directly below our bedroom, and watched the TV. It seems she subscribed to the old fallacy that is so popular among American tourists in Europe, that volume will make up for lack of language comprehension. Harumph did the same with the TV, obviously believing that if it was loud enough she would understand what was being said. This made it impossible for Karen and I to sleep. What to do? Well, it dawned on me that the cable connection for her TV was in my bedroom just behind the upstairs TV. So, at a certain hour of the night, I would just reach behind the TV and disconnect the cable, sending Harumph’s TV into snowy oblivion. But I didn’t want her to KNOW that I was doing that, so I developed a technique: about 15 minutes before I was ready to go to sleep, I would disconnect the cable for a second, then reconnect it. Over the next few minutes I would randomly disconnect and reconnect the cable giving the impression that the cable contact was slowly breaking down. What a coincidence that it happened every night just before I went to bed.
But as Harumph got more and more annoying, I got more and more creative with the cable connection. She was cranking the volume on the TV so high that I could hear every word of the show she was watching on the floor above. Perfect, thinks I. I wait until I hear her playing a show, say ER. Then I turn my TV, with the sound very low, to the same show. Then I sit and watch the show with the cable connection to her TV in my hand. I chose a character in the show at random, say Carter. Then every time that character speaks, I pull apart the connection. As soon as someone else speaks, I put it back together. So I systematically cut one character from the show:
Dr. Green: Carter, what’s wrong with the person in trauma 2?
Carter: Zzzzzssssccccchhhsssszzzzz.
Dr. Green: My god!
Carter: Ssssszzzzzzcccccchhhhssss.
Dr. Green: That’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever heard!
Harumph was also incredibly shy about, well, bodily things. For example, she would never put her underwear in the laundry basket. Instead, as far as we can figure out, she washed them by hand in her bathroom sink then dried them somehow (perhaps by blowing on them?) so that we never actually saw her precious undergarments.
I used this reticence to my advantage. One day she told us had been invited to a party by some people at her school. Although these people were not Korean, were, in fact, largely white devils, Harumph felt compelled to go. But that meant that she might actually have to talk in English and might, heaven forbid, have to ask something personal. The day before this terrifying event she approached me, blushing furiously, and asked, "If I am at someone’s house and I have to..." here voice dropped to a shamed whisper and she covered her mouth, "Use the bathroom, how do I ask please?"
"Ah," I explained patiently, "Well, you CAN say, ‘may I please use your bathroom,’ but it is MORE polite to say either, ‘I have to take a big steaming dump,’or ‘I have to pinch a loaf.’ She nodded, thanked me, and scurried back to her room. She didn’t look at me for a month after her party.
And then there was the family. See, Karen had a brainstorm: one homestay good; three homestay better. The homestay agency had phoned and said they had a mother with two children who wanted to stay here for a week. It was good money. One small problem, though: we didn’t have the room. In order to accommodate them, Christian would have to sleep on an air mattress in Max’s room for the week. You can imagine how pleased he was about that. When the family arrived, we noticed some interesting dynamics. The mother was a total dragon lady; tough, demanding, and not a little weird. One boy was about Christian’s age, that is 12, but he acted like he was 6. The other was a tall, gawky teen. He was the least objectionable of the bunch but he was also the one that the mother picked on the most. One night as we were having dinner, Karen asked about the teen’s plans for university. What did he plan to study? Medicine? The mother burst into guffaws of laughter at the thought and declared, "No no! His head is too empty! Ha ha ha!"
Gee, thanks mom.
Now, it seems that there was no man in this family. He had taken off some years ago and the mother didn’t know where he was. Wherever he is, I pray she doesn’t find him. He did the right thing heading for the hills and he should stay there. Anyway, this meant that the teen was without a man to look up to. So, rather pathetically, he started to follow me around like a whipped pup. Hey, I didn’t mind. But it was kinda sad. What I DID mind was the fact that the mother had lied to the homestay agency about her youngest son. See, if any individual coming over has a health problem or special requirement, they are supposed to notify the agency so the agency can see if the hosting family has any problems with the condition. Makes obvious sense. I mean, what happens if I open the door and find my new homestay student is in an iron lung? I might have to rearrange furniture. Damn inconvenient.
Anyway, the youngest boy DID have a small problem: he was incontinent. That’s right, he’s 12 and he wets his bed. Now, most of you have children that are younger than mine so let me tell you, by the time your child gets to age 12, he’s not just making the nappy damp when he goes in the night. He’s filling the wading pool. That image is, I think, particularly apt given that the Mon had brought a rubber sheet with her that she put on the bed. Imagine Karen’s surprise when she went into the bedroom to bring some fresh towels and found a small hot tub of urine on top of the bed. She actually screamed. To make matters worse, said Dragon Mother thought it was funny and that it was our duty to wash all the sheets her boy had soaked everyday that they were here. Uh huh. Right. That’s why homestay families are called "slaves" in the contract. Makes sense. Anyway, it was not a happy week.
Revenge on this loathsome mother came at the last minute. Just as she was waiting for the car to come pick her family up and take them to the airport, she asked me, in very broken English, if I would buy her a pair of wooden salads forks that she had seen while in the souvenir shop on the top of Grouse Mountain (I had gone with her son on the Grouse Grind, a hiking trail up the side of the mountain, while Mom and the human urine factory took the gondola up). Sure, says I, and she gives me $25 to cover the costs. Her car arrives, I wave the family goodbye, then it’s off to the liquor store to spend the cash on liquid refreshments.
About four months later I actually felt a pang of guilt about this deception. It happened when Karen and I were shopping at IKEA and were passing through the kitchenware aisle. I felt so guilty that I bought a pair of wooden salad forks right there on the spot. They cost $1.98. Okay, so now I had the forks, but if I mailed them to Dragon Mom how would I explain the four-month delay? Very tricky. Well, I had Christian take a polaroid of me sitting on the couch with one foot wrapped in a tensor bandage while holding the forks and smiling bravely at the camera. I enclosed the photo and the forks in a package to Dragon Mom which contained the following letter (and no, I’m not making this up. Check with Karen if you don’t believe me; she tried to stop me):
Dear Harumi:
I’m so sorry that it has taken so long for me to mail you these salad forks. I wanted to send them much sooner, but there have been some problems. Let me explain. The day after you left Vancouver, I went up the Grouse Grind to get the salad forks. Unfortunately, I fell and hurt my foot. I went to the doctor, and he told me not to walk on it for a while, but I wanted to get you the salad forks, so the next week I tried to go up the Grouse Grind again. Sadly, I fell and really hurt my ankle. When they took me to the hospital, they found that my foot was broken in many places. I had to have a cast put on my foot. But I felt so bad that I had not yet bought the salad forks, that I went back to Grouse Mountain on my crutches, and took the gondola up to the top. However, when I was on top of the mountain, one of my crutches broke, and I fell again. They had to take me down the mountain in an emergency gondola. I still did not have the salad forks!
Finally, after much physiotherapy, I was able to walk again. As soon as I was able to walk, I took the gondola up Grouse again, but when I got to the store, they did not have any salad forks. They told me that they would get some soon, so every week for two months, I went up the mountain to look for the forks. Finally they came in! Here they are. I hope you enjoy them. It has taken a long time, but I have finally been able to keep my promise to you.
Hope that you and the boys are having a good time. We are planning a big Christmas party, but I don’t think that I will be doing any dancing, since my foot still hurts if I move it.
All the best.
Your friend in Canada,
Paul B
Harumi’s response, some weeks later:
Dear Paul:
I was so sorprised to know of your accident.
I’m so sorry to know that you’ve hurt your leg.
Does you leg still hurt?
If I didn’t ask you to get the salad forks, You didn’t fall and get hurt...
I wish I was there to cheer you up.
I’m very very sorry.
And thank you for your kindness. I treasure the salad forks you gave me.
I hope you get well soon. And please take good care of yourself.
Please send my best wishes to Karen.
Your friend in Japan
Harumi
Pretty satisfying for $1.98.
Sylvie was the easiest of our homestays. She was Swiss, French Swiss. As I came to learn, the Swiss are actually divided into four distinct flavours: French, German, Italian, and Romansh. The latter is some sort of amalgamation of the first three and would, I’d think, be the sensible option for the whole country, but no: they stay in their various little hyphenated enclaves. The unfortunate thing about this is that it makes it difficult to make satisfying sweeping generalizations about the Swiss. But let’s try anyway: in general, the Swiss are anal-retentive, money-driven, stiffly formal, fondue suckers. How money-driven? Every human being that Sylvie knows in Switzerland is a banker. Seriously. All her family, her boyfriend and his family, all her friends, everyone. She herself was a nurse. So figure a societal ratio of, say 45 bankers to every nurse in Switzerland. Not a good place to be sick.
And I do not joke about the fondue. I don’t know how many times Sylvie would come home from some adventure out on the town with the following observation: "Oh, it was very funny for me to go to the movies here, because in Switzerland all the movie seats have fondue holders on them so you can eat fondue and watch the movie" or "Oh, it was very funny for me to ride a bicycle here, because in Switzerland all the bicycles have fondue holders on the handle bars so you can eat fondue as you ride" and "Oh, it was very funny for me to go bungee jumping here, because in Switzerland all bungee cords have fondue holders on the them so you can eat fondue as you fall." Apparently in Switzerland there are fondue holders in public bathrooms, on bank machines, attached to parking meters, floating in the middle of swimming pools, on the walls of squash courts, and on all forms of public transportation including ski lifts. People with lactose intolerance are not able to get visas to visit the country. At the end of a long day’s work at the bank, employees shout to each other, "It’s fondue time!" An attractive young lady is referred to as "one hot fondue." Something which is not functioning properly is said to be "as useless as cheeseless fondue." There is an all-fondue cable channel on Swiss television. Swiss teenagers rebel against their parents by flouting fondue etiquette. These "fondue punks" quickly grow out of this madness, of course, and spend their middle ages regaling their friends with stories of their wild youths: "Yes, it is true, I once dipped two pieces of pumpernickle into the fondue pot at once. My father almost disowned me. What a devil I was!"
This succession of homestays kept us out of debt and allowed us to make enough money to afford four round trips tickets to Shannon airport, on the west coast of Ireland. Much more about that adventure later.
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