slapstick

Everyone is slowly warming to me, which is a relief. I have a terrible, near-obsessive need to be liked. My presence must not be merely tolerated, but yearned for and delighted in. It's absurd; you'd think I was a spoiled only child, raised by parents who hovered anxiously and applauded my every sneeze as an act of genius. I was and am spoiled, there's no denying that, but I do have a sister, and MD was never what you'd call a helicopter parent.

Anyway, for whatever reason, I am hell-bent on endearing myself to everyone I meet. I am burdened in this mission by my crummy personality and shitty attitude, not to mention lack of quantifiable skills. (Wait, is talking during movies a skill?) Fortunately, I cannot walk ten feet with falling over or otherwise humiliating myself, and this seems to appeal to people. The staff at my hostel in Bolivia warmed to me only after I sprained my ankle and was reduced to hopping everywhere. My host sisters in Nicaragua were shy and reserved when I arrived; then I fell out of a hammock, everyone laughed, and we passed a pleasant evening making fart noises into our elbows.

Then there's Rosalind, one of the Vietnamese refugees at the shelter. Rosalind is the administrative assistant in the office, and I'm forever asking her for this or that. She's quiet, but I knew from seeing her with the kids and the women that she had a wonderfully playful, silly side. I'd been trying to win her over since I got here. She was unfailingly polite, but she never chatted with me or hugged me from behind, the way I saw her do to a couple of the other farang.

A couple days ago, that all changed. You see, what had happened was - uh - well, I electrocuted myself. Hard. Hard enough that if I were a character in a comic strip, my hair would have stood straight up and my shoes would have flown off, followed shortly by my socks and possibly my entire epidermis.

The current connected powerfully enough that for several seconds I couldn't let go of the power strip, and I let out a little yelp of terror. My screech brought people running. By that time I'd managed to shake off the power strip, and Harriet (the director) assumed I'd seen a rat. I had to explain that, no, I hadn't seen any kind of vermin, it's just that I was a total jackass who didn't understand the concept of electrical current.

It was completely mortifying, and I covered my face with my hands, acting out a little pantomime of shame for the benefit of the non-English speakers. Most of the women grinned, the way Thai people often do in such situations, so as to dispel tension and minimize your loss of face. And then, out of nowhere, sweet, reticent Rosalind laughed - nay, guffawed, serene Vietnamese comportment be damned - and threw her arms around me, and that was that. Within hours, she was talking to me about her zits and offering to paint my nails if they ever grow past "nervous lesbian" length.

Rosalind wasn't the only person here who took a while to decide she liked me okay. Fran told me recently that when she first met me, she thought I was much older and kind of mean. "The kids did, too," she said casually.

Ah. That explained why many of the kids were so distant to start with. I guess I can't blame them. I think about what they see when they look at me: farang, oddly-shaped, mustachioed, with wild frizzy hair and a limp. I am Baba Yaga without the cool house. It's a wonder they speak to me at all.

I asked Fran what made her change her mind about me. She said that it was the way I laughed all the time and chattered with her - she realized I had to be young. In essence, I think, she realized I was too dumb to have yet lived a full life. And that's really the crux of the matter: people are slowly realizing that I am too incompetent to be mean-spirited, too scatterbrained to represent much of a threat. For now, I am just another farang, another wacky white girl sticking my fingers in their babies' mouths and wrestling with their toddlers. But someday soon they'll realize that I'm also a prime source of entertainment, whether I'm falling down, hitting my head, setting my hair on fire, or sticking my fingers in electrical sockets.

And you know what? They're going to love me.