REWRITING MEN AND LITTLE GIRLS

There are times when I am glad that I do not look like I would understand Chinese.
It gives me a chance to hear things.

I recognize many of the people who get on the bus at my stop in the morning, as I have seen them often enough. Well over half of them are Cantonese heading down to Chinatown, and before nine o'clock parents will escort their children, especially if the small people in question are still kindergarten age. Several mothers get on at my stop.
It's probably scary for the kids, as often they will be hemmed in by huge adults as we all jam up at the front while the legal secretaries and very important yuppie functionaries of downtown firms luxuriate in the back of the bus.
Sometimes I'm surprised that none of them panic.

I found a seat all the way in the back this time, along with a father escorting his small daughter. I may have seen her before - cute moppet with a bouncy ponytail and lively eyes - but not him. He was a new quantity.
There were no other Cantonese in the back, and the little girl spoke softly with her dad.
Why, she wanted to know, was he taking her? Why him? And why now? That's what mommy always did, and him doing so was just not right. What was happening?
Well, mommy has to go to work, she has a job.
Don't you work, she asked her dad.
Used to. Till last week.

She wanted to know why he wasn't working anymore, what was wrong with him?
As she asked, I wondered how he would explain that the economy has tanked. Would he tell her that jobs are scarce? That sometimes even with the best of intentions, life just isn't fair?

He avoided the question by simply stating that the kongsi no longer had money. He would probably be working again, elsewhere, but in the meantime, she could go to school a little later, and he would take her.
Hai kam do ge le wo - that's all.

"Mommies are supposed to take kids to school! It's their job!"

He insisted that daddies can do that too, there was no rigid rule.
It was better for him to take her now, and sometimes the daddy get's to do things that usually mommy does.
Much more convenient (方便 fong pien).
This clearly baffled the child. Things are VERY wrong with the world when people don't stick to their own thing. Convenience does NOT enter into it.
Change is often disturbing, and at that age kids are accustomed to more rigid gender roles.

She wanted to know if he would still stay the daddy, even if he did things he was NOT meant to do?
Of course he would. Taking his daughter to school would not change that.
Even though men are not supposed to do such things.
Sometime a man simply does what he does.

Even if he isn't working?

Especially then.


一個好男人

I don't think she bought it. Her brow furrowed, and she fell silent, looking straight ahead.
But perhaps she tried to understand that despite her father deliberately upsetting the apple-cart, and rebelling against his properly assigned role, it was something he needed to do.
She looked very serious for the next three or four blocks.

As we got within a block of the school, she worriedly asked if he would be a good man.

He fervently assured her he would.

She led him off the bus at Clay and Powell Street.
It looked like she had new confidence in him.
He might not be doing everything right.
But he was still dad, so there!


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