Chings and Chongs

When I was working for Whitey we had to attend a lot of meetings. To keep myself awake I would often make a list of every Super Bowl winner and loser, in chronological order. Or sometimes I would write Chinese characters. The meeting would be going on and I would be writing furiously, looking very studious. It helped pass the time.

Because I was brainwashed, when I was 19 I served a Mormon mission to Hong Kong for two years and I learned how to speak Cantonese, which is pretty much just a bunch of chings and chongs, but when you put the chings and chongs together in the right order and use the right tones it all makes sense and the Chinese people get very happy. They were some of the nicest people ever. I love Chinese people. Except the mean ones. After I learned how to talk I started reading newspapers so I could learn what all their squiggly characters meant, and eventually I got pretty good at it.

I'll share a secret with you: if you're looking at a bunch of squiggly lines and it's Chinese, and a ton of the lines are all bunched together it probably says something like "There was a big car accident yesterday in Wan Chai and traffic got all jammed up." Or it might say "This Saturday the high will be 27 degrees (Celsius)". They use Celsius over there. So when the Chinese people are reading all those squiggly lines you're probably not missing much.

When working for Whitey I would draw characters in meetings so I could practice what I'd learned and hopefully not forget. Plus it looked like I was paying attention when I wasn't. I even kept a journal in Chinese for like a year. But now I've forgotten so many of the characters that I can't even read that part of my own journal. But if I could it would probably say something like "Last Saturday the high was 27 degrees Celsius." It might also say "Joseph Smith (that's him with God and Jesus) is the best thing ever." That's exciting stuff if you love Joseph Smith or the history of weather, otherwise it's pretty mundane. So even though I can't even read my own journal I haven't lost much sleep over it. I wish it talked about where to find buried treasure. Joseph Smith knew how to find buried treasure. OK he didn't know how to find it but he knew how to look for it. If knowing Chinese would help me find buried treasure I would commit myself to re-learning it so I could read my journal, find out where the treasure was buried and then go get it. Then I'd buy my wife a huge, flawless diamond ring. Then I'd ask her to please give me what I want, which we'll talk about some other day. In Super Bowl III in 1969 the Jets beat the Colts 16-7. I pulled that right out of my brain, just like that.