You see what happens when you fall asleep in the middle of the day, just because you can? 3am in the morning, you toss yourself about a bit in bed, eternally optimistic. You pull the blankets up. You swipe the blankets off. You idly plot your future, thinking that something that futile will surely, surely put you to sleep. When you get to what toy to buy your third grandson on his fifth birthday, you finally give up, and sit up. Who're you kidding? With that amount of masturbation, you'd be lucky to have any left to inseminate a slug by the time you're thirty.
All rhetoric, of course. Especially the last bit. I'm not confident of many things, but slug insemination numbers among them.
Staring at blinky blinky cursor taunting you to write something, you wonder what you've become. Among other things, the sort of person who owns a filthy keyboard. Ah, the times you gave people shit for that. Now, besides dust, hair and some mysterious sticky stuff, you have dog hair on the keyboard. Well, it must be dog hair - you've never had a blonde in the room before. But it's fine. The main qwerty bits are clean from use. And if you have to touch a function key, just remember not to touch yourself after.
You know who doesn't have these problems? My grocery shopkeeper. Walk down Holland Close and in true, old-school HDB style, the bottom of one of the blocks is a row of shops. There's a clinic, a coffeeshop, even a computer place that will sell you equipment ten years out of date. And there is my grocery shop.
I call it my grocery shop, because beer-and-fags shop sounds so awkward. Although that's pretty much all I buy from there, it sells everything. No, srsly. I once brought a sample of some strange Soviet Russia-age battery, confident that for once, I would win. He rummages behind the counter and produces one. It was in between the cigarette paper and the China-made sex toys. This shop will sell you things to stay alive, die faster and feed your dog. Just don't expect posh stuff. Nescafe instant coffee have. No Richard Simmons Genuine Slave-Picked Roast.
None of this swank organisation business. Black people cannot shop there, because there is no room for them to move. The concept of aisles was introduced to the shopkeeper, yes, but the execution was quite obviously a "Yeah, you happy now?" kind of affair. Aside from the main man, it is run by his brothers – one a bespectacled version of himself, and one retarded. Yes, literally. The shop never closes except for Chinese New Year. All through the year, dialect swearing of the other two brothers at the retarded third one fills the air.
Some time ago, I trot towards my favourite shop with a spring in my step, as I do when I'm expecting breasts or beer. It was closed. Confused at first, I then cried tragically towards the heavens, whereupon a small black cloud formed and rained over me.
It remained closed for three days, maybe more. I don't know, I was so distressed. Sure, there were other places to get beer and fags from, but it just wasn't the same. Nowhere else does the shopkeeper count the change in Hokkien under his breath and then tell you the total in English because you look like a nice kind of lad.
When it finally opened for business again, I casually asked for a pack, and remarked upon the unusual closure. A holiday was it, you lazy bastard?
"Orh. Yah closed. No lah, my wife died."
Very casual about it. Good thing wife doesn't rhyme with dog or goldfish in Chinese. No, it was definitely Wife. And like how you feel when you get harpooned in the left buttock cheek, I was hard pressed for words. Time was running out. Very quickly. Only another 0.1 seconds before it got Awkward. So with my usual elegance with these things, I blinked and said, "Orh."
"She was sick," he added helpfully.
"Ah," I replied, in the tone of someone who suddenly solved a difficult math problem. That explains it. Sick, you say. Well, why didn't you say so in the first place? Tsk tsk.
I felt all that was carried in my really rather stupid reply, but he did not kill me with the cigarette paper, so all was well. Besides, he probably had had to explain the situation several times that day. I picked up my beer and fags and ran for it. In shame, for some reason. There was really nothing I could have done better. It would either have had to have been, "Wife die, no need close shop so long right?" or "Wife die, you close three days only. You not sad ah?"
Business as usual, after that. Yes, complete with yelling at retarded brother. Until the other day, when the shop was closed again. No, say it ain't so. I composed condolences in my head, determined not to be caught unprepared this time. It was open the next day, so I went and asked.
"Orh. Yah, closed. My wife's one year anniversary. So we go and dong."
The coolie breed from which I descend can be succinct like that. Yes, we have words for ceremony and memorials and the holding of thereof. But you have bells you ring at these things, right? So you go and dong, lah.
No, no sarcasm this time. I found the whole thing quite remarkable. As you may have been able to tell by my several remarks so far. Day in, day out, seven days a week. Open shop, shuffle stuff around, collect money, yell at retarded brother. Wife die, ok, close awhile. Wife one year, ok, close to go and dong. Rather than the hand-wringing, mascara-smearing black veil kind of thing other people do, sometimes for weeks, months, years, life must go on. People need their fags and beer. Uncle Tan still owes me $5.30, must remember to collect. Anything other than actual death of self is only a flesh wound.
So no, he probably doesn't have the sort of problems I do, lying awake at night, inventing problems for myself. Heck, he probably doesn't even have a keyboard to philosophize over.
Does he win life, then? Maybe. I don't know. I'll go ask my dog.
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