Short Note on Being Born no. 89

Ted and I walk down the stairs. The woman at the first counter tries to sell us t-shirts. Some of them are nice but we don’t stop. Ted can always come back and I for damned sure don’t need any more t-shirts. I like the blue one with the faded print on the front. It looks like a Chinese character for Peace or Enlightenment. — I ask Ted as we pass the woman. She looks on in eager anticipation. He stops for a second and turns around. He looks and says slowly,

“It means… Modern Girl”

I say, “… oh.”

We keep walking, picking up the pace through the crowds of shoppers and stragglers as the woman at that first counter shouts after us clearly in a last ditch attempt to bring us back to her,

“Very good quality… Good price for you!”

After searching, Ted finds a good pair. They are blue and white and have no heels. They are boot cuts, which means that they go all the way to above the ankles. That’s the classic look. I find out later that Chuck Taylor’s never have heels. That’s why they’re Chuck Taylor’s.

Ted tries them on and they don’t fit. He looks up at me as I snoop around and he says,

“Jeez, they don’t fit!”

The young girl who’s been making eyes at us, she runs into the back to the mountain of shoe boxes and comes back a second later with another pair. Ted tries it on. It fits. We look at the young girl who’s smiling and happy. She’s confident of a sale. She looks down at us, pushes her

shoulders back so her pert tits stand out at us and lets her hair fall over her pretty

eyes — she says,

“Five hundred. Only.”

Ted laughs softly in his way, and says to me as if I didn’t hear her,

“she’s asking for five hundred.”

I say,

“…isn’t that too much, man?”

Ted says nothing. He turns his toes in the shoes. He looks at me sheepishly and says,

“I really like them man. They’re neat. And they’re so comfortable. What about you, do you look them?”

I nod my head and say,

“yeah but that’s way too much man. Tell her two hundred.”

Ted chuckles nervously for a second, then looks up at the smiling young girl and says,

“shyer kwai” or something that sounds like that. I am guessing it means, “two hundred kwai.”

The girl throws her hair back and giggles. She moves her weight from one small foot to the other, swivelling her little hips squeezed into her faded jeans. She’s wearing a blue t-shirt. I look at her shoes. They are pink with green laces. They look almost new. I’m happy for her.

She says,

“whoa!”

and Ted and I smile. She says,

“No, too little. Four hundred.”

Ted looks at me. He really wants these shoes. I say looking into his soft puppy pleading eyes with my own slightly evil look,

“Cute, huh, baba?”

Ted’s happy. He wears his new pair of shoes. All of a sudden his step has a new spring in it.

As we’re walking up to the exit into the afternoon sun and the traffic, he says,

“Gee, you should have bought that t-shirt baba. It would have looked good on you. How much was she asking…?”

Only Ted says things like that.