Unforgettable Mr. B
.
That summer, I finally worked for Mr. B, for that extra USD 0.50 per hour. That was an additional USD 4 per day, a princely sum, I guess. He had been coaxing me to work for him for weeks by then, I was working for the power plant at the time and each time I’m in UT Hall to take the chiller water samples, he’d beckon me over for a cup of tea.
“Hey Joe, come on over and have a cup of tea first. Don’t worry about Edward, he wouldn’t mind if you sit down and talk with me for a few minutes.” Edward was my supervisor at the power plant.
He called me Joe from day one when he found out that my name was too hard for him to pronounce. He was bad at that, at least Edward made some effort. One day he’d call me Alimin and the next day he would go for Amin and later still it would be something else but none of them would even be close.
Mr. B ran the engineering college. Literally. The dean listens to him. He’s been there like forever. Eighteen years ago he was 68 years old. That makes him on the wrong side of eighty now. He has only one eye, the other one is a glass eye.
“I only have one eye and with one eye, you could not judge distances very well and I find it hard to catch things being thrown at me. I never got around to playing baseball with my sons since I simply couldn’t catch the ball and I feel so bad about it.”
So naturally we’d start throwing things at him. But for the love of me, I can’t recall the reason why he lost the eye.
One crazy thing he wanted to do was asking me to marry his granddaughter. Him, a white anglo-saxon protestant, and a mason at that, wants me, a muslim Malaysian, to marry his granddaughter. Had he lost his marbles then?
“Mr. B, you have got to be kidding, she’s still in high school and I’m sure your son would like to have a say in it.”
“You leave my son to me, Joe.”
Somehow he had convinced Mrs. B to agree with him. My mother is going to kill me if they had their way.
And no, his granddaughter is not ugly, I can assure you of that.
So he settled by putting my photo next to hers on his desk. I guessed he opted for a spiritual marriage. Or was that a ploy of his? I still have pictures of our pictures together. Huh, that shows that I wasn’t really really saying no to his proposal. Playing hard to get probably…..
The first time I went to his house, I had a torrid time with his dog, a huge German Shepherd.
“Don’t worry Joe, she’s still a puppy. But whatever you do, don’t run.”
A puppy my foot. That mutt was nearly waist high and all day long it kept nuzzling my crotch, my back and kept nibbling my ankle. A dog that size does whatever it wants, crotch or whatever it may be. It was drooling all over me and when I finally went home that day I stopped by the highway to get a load of red clay and later that night my new 501, Polo t-shirt and Nike socks had a red syrupy dunking wash. Thank the stars that during each subsequent visit, she’d just insist on one whiff of me and went about her way around the house, waiting for the mailman and the newspaper boy to show up. The mailman and the paper boy would make her go crazy but for some reason, she completely ignored the garbagemen. Mr. B reckoned that her previous owner was a garbageman (he got her when she was about 6 months old) so she might pretty much be used to their scent. But that was only a theory.
He was pretty upset when I finally had to leave. He wanted me to stay. I had to come back home, I just have to see how my mother was doing then, my father passed away the previous year, while I was still away. That was the only reason he let me go.
As a parting gift, I gave him a small carving of an elephant bearing the inscription “When my ship sails out of sight, it does not mean that the journey ends, it only means that the river bends.”
The river has straightened once so far.
.
That summer, I finally worked for Mr. B, for that extra USD 0.50 per hour. That was an additional USD 4 per day, a princely sum, I guess. He had been coaxing me to work for him for weeks by then, I was working for the power plant at the time and each time I’m in UT Hall to take the chiller water samples, he’d beckon me over for a cup of tea.
“Hey Joe, come on over and have a cup of tea first. Don’t worry about Edward, he wouldn’t mind if you sit down and talk with me for a few minutes.” Edward was my supervisor at the power plant.
He called me Joe from day one when he found out that my name was too hard for him to pronounce. He was bad at that, at least Edward made some effort. One day he’d call me Alimin and the next day he would go for Amin and later still it would be something else but none of them would even be close.
Mr. B ran the engineering college. Literally. The dean listens to him. He’s been there like forever. Eighteen years ago he was 68 years old. That makes him on the wrong side of eighty now. He has only one eye, the other one is a glass eye.
“I only have one eye and with one eye, you could not judge distances very well and I find it hard to catch things being thrown at me. I never got around to playing baseball with my sons since I simply couldn’t catch the ball and I feel so bad about it.”
So naturally we’d start throwing things at him. But for the love of me, I can’t recall the reason why he lost the eye.
One crazy thing he wanted to do was asking me to marry his granddaughter. Him, a white anglo-saxon protestant, and a mason at that, wants me, a muslim Malaysian, to marry his granddaughter. Had he lost his marbles then?
“Mr. B, you have got to be kidding, she’s still in high school and I’m sure your son would like to have a say in it.”
“You leave my son to me, Joe.”
Somehow he had convinced Mrs. B to agree with him. My mother is going to kill me if they had their way.
And no, his granddaughter is not ugly, I can assure you of that.
So he settled by putting my photo next to hers on his desk. I guessed he opted for a spiritual marriage. Or was that a ploy of his? I still have pictures of our pictures together. Huh, that shows that I wasn’t really really saying no to his proposal. Playing hard to get probably…..
The first time I went to his house, I had a torrid time with his dog, a huge German Shepherd.
“Don’t worry Joe, she’s still a puppy. But whatever you do, don’t run.”
A puppy my foot. That mutt was nearly waist high and all day long it kept nuzzling my crotch, my back and kept nibbling my ankle. A dog that size does whatever it wants, crotch or whatever it may be. It was drooling all over me and when I finally went home that day I stopped by the highway to get a load of red clay and later that night my new 501, Polo t-shirt and Nike socks had a red syrupy dunking wash. Thank the stars that during each subsequent visit, she’d just insist on one whiff of me and went about her way around the house, waiting for the mailman and the newspaper boy to show up. The mailman and the paper boy would make her go crazy but for some reason, she completely ignored the garbagemen. Mr. B reckoned that her previous owner was a garbageman (he got her when she was about 6 months old) so she might pretty much be used to their scent. But that was only a theory.
He was pretty upset when I finally had to leave. He wanted me to stay. I had to come back home, I just have to see how my mother was doing then, my father passed away the previous year, while I was still away. That was the only reason he let me go.
As a parting gift, I gave him a small carving of an elephant bearing the inscription “When my ship sails out of sight, it does not mean that the journey ends, it only means that the river bends.”
The river has straightened once so far.
.
posted by dudae_simboyo at 01:57
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