My dad grew up poor – something he always likes to remind me. And my god, everyone in his family worked so hard to get to where they are now. But I think the thing I appreciate the most are the stories they tell from back then. I’m too stupid to remember them clearly, and whenever I try to recall them, they get more blurry. I should write them down…….
Add that to the Things I Should Do list for the summer.
Last week my dad actually told me one that I completely forgot about. This time I got myself to remember the gist of it:
You know my family raised and sold ducks in addition to farming. A lot of our neighbors did this; we bought food from one of the merchants, and fed that to the ducks. But one day, the food that we bought was contaminated with…I don’t know, chemical-poison and killed all of our ducks : ( Even so, the merchant refused to take responsibility and demanded that we pay for the food, which we couldn’t because well, no ducks, no money. He took my family to court and sued us, sued us! And I told you, Taiwan, corrupt court system. Everyone’s corrupt. Whoever had the most money won. Even now, but everyone’s more quiet about it. The merchant paid off the jury, and in the end, all of our rice was taken away. I remember just being in court and memorizing the faces of the jury. I even wrote down their names, and promised that I would kill each and everyone of them. Mann, I wanted them to die! Those scumbags. You know I was so angry, it wasn’t fair! And I was just a kid. I was just a kid and they took everything.
Everything sounds cooler when it’s in chinese : (
Originally I wrote this from my POV, but it ended up sounding so distant. So impersonal. I cannot tell stories for the life of me : ( Which is too bad, I want to be able to share my dad’s stories with justice. Like the time my five-year old dad got arrested for punching a pregnant lady(she hit him first!) I want to be good enough for these kinds of stories. So I guess the only thing I can do now is to practice, and write down the details of these stories so then one day my future self can look back and salvage them.
Eheh, my dad tells me he has no childhood, but mannn for a childhoodless person he sure has a hell lot of stories to tell.
