Sue's Blog - Some assembly required.

Oriental.

On Tuesday I cranked up the idiot magnet and set off for the bus stop.
I was on my way to do my shift at the animal shelter.

Picture the scene.................
There am I, sitting on the bench at the bus stop.
Standing in front of me.......just in front of me,.........about 3 feet away and facing me......is a little, chubby Chinese woman.
She has her eyes closed.
Next to me, on the bench, is her iphone/pod/whatever, which is blasting out plinky plonk Chinese music while a morose Chinese male voice droned something which sounded like the "Ying Tong Song" in very slow motion.

Traffic is whizzing by and sometimes even stopping at the traffic lights where we are situated.
The little Chinese woman is going through a set of manoeuvres which are triggered by the bloke's voice.
For instance ....he would announce "Ying Tong Piddle Aye Po" and she would proceed thusly.

Set movements and what they appeared to represent.

1. Reach down to the ground, feel around for loose elastic and pull drawers up.

2. Wrap large invisible towel around you.

3. Pick up invisible baby and hurl it over your head.

4. Do up invisible buttons on invisible shirt.

5. Whoops, elastic has gone again. Reach down and pull drawers up again.

Sigh. It is odd but the length of time I seem to wait for that bus seems to be directly influenced by the magnitude of the idiot who shares the bus stop with me.
There should be a maths equation about this phenomenon.

She looked so smug too. I don't know why the orientals think they are so superior when it comes to Tai Chi etc. We Brits have our own ancient set of movements which are known by people throughout the land.
We don't waste them alone at bus stops. We use them when we all gathered in celebration.
It is called The Hokey Cokey.
It is way more fun and I bet that is older than Tai Chi.

I was amazed this week to realise just how far back my idiot magnet goes.
It is a much older garment than I thought.
This is what happened.
I got an email from Friends Reunited. I haven't had any contact with them for years. I have made a few contacts from the past and they have been wonderful. Now, if I am looking for anyone I tend to use Facebook which seems to work really well.
Anyway, this email from Friends Reunited said this person had left me a message. So, I had a look.
It was from a girl I vaguely remembered from my Primary school. PRIMARY school....remember that.
She just said her name, mentioned a few teachers and asked if I remembered her.
I wrote back and said I thought I did remember her (we were never really chums but were in the same class), I asked how she was etc, etc. and hoped she was doing well.....you know the sort of stuff.
I got a reply.
She said "Were you the girl who trod on my foot?"

I almost wrote back to ask if she was the girl who borrowed my pencil but I decided not to bother.
To think my idiot magnet was already working when I was 8 years old.

posted by Sue Banks @ 8:16 AM