I’ve been single for a month now and really haven’t had to talk about it too much. I made announcements to my family and a few close friends and I suppose the rest has taken care of itself.
Either that or I don’t know very many people.
One person on the short list is Mr. Futon Shop, the guy down the street who sold me a spare futon and an autumn blanket about a week before the breakup. He’s a loud fella with a few gold teeth and kinky salt-and-pepper hair that he wears in pompadour. It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a Japanese ‘fro.
He didn’t know anything about my ex, but she came to visit last month and we were spotted by MRS. Futon Shop while walking around town.
A few weeks of work and gossip later, I strolled over to Mr. Futon Shop’s to see if he could recommend a tailor to me, as I needed a pair of pants hemmed. I barely got “Please excuse me for intruding and barging into your fine Futon Shop, Mr. Futon Shop” out of my mouth when he bellowed,
“Oh, Mac! Who’s this dish you were walking around town with? NOW I know why you needed an extra futon! Eh? Eh? Am I right?”
I was quite unprepared to talk about the situation in Japanese, but I thought it might be good to practice on someone who probably didn’t care all that much. That was a miscalculation, but I proceeded to tell him that we had broken up.
We did it mostly because our lives are heading in different directions and are showing no signs of getting any closer. We had been long-distance for over two years and needed to focus on our own stuff.
In response to this careful and thoughtful explanation, I got a gruff,
“Bah! You know what you should’ve done? You shoulda said, ‘Shut up and follow me wherever I go!’ I said that to Mrs. Futon Shop and look at us!”
Keep in mind that fifty to sixty seconds before this, I was thinking about a pair of pants that was an inch too long.
I’m not sure how long it would’ve taken me to fashion any kind of answer to this staggeringly 1950s comment, but I didn’t have to worry because a gentle voice came out from behind a stack of futon blankets to my left:
“Ohhh, Mr. Futon Shop, kids these days don’t think like that. Times are different and talking like that would never work.”
I hadn’t even seen the little old man in his seventies seated casually on a chair against the wall.
His eyebrows were easily as wide as his face, and thus he became Mr. Eyebrows. He didn’t have the look of a customer waiting for his futon mattress to be cleaned or repaired, and a quick glance at the table next to him revealed a cup of tea on a saucer.
“What are you talking about? There comes a time when a man’s gotta take charge!” Mr. Futon Shop bristled.
Mr. Eyebrows held up a long, bony hand and cooed, “Now, Mr. Futon Shop, this kid is a foreigner and we don’t know what in the world he thinks. Plus, kids these days aren’t rushing into marriage.”
The conversation that followed was as could be expected between two older guys talking to a young man about settling down and getting married. There were a few more “If you really loved her”s from Mr. Futon Shop and some insightful comments from Mr. Eyebrows, and I threw in a word or two here and there.
The topic went to my job, and I expressed my concern that I could be sent anywhere in the world to do my job and that I would gladly go, but that I didn’t want to uproot someone else each time that happened.
My final words were, “I just don’t know where I will be sent or what will happen.”
Mr. Eyebrows furrowed his brow, which must have taken some special muscles that I don’t know about. His coal-black eyes peered out from beneath his gigantic yet well-maintained eyebrows.
“Nobody knows that, son.”
I often get to thinking that whatever business or conversations I conduct in Japanese take place in some kind of different dimension and that everything is separate from my “real” consciousness in English. There are many differences between the languages that are better off forgotten when the conversation is happening in one language or the other.
Then a topic like this comes along, and I’m struck by how similarly it unfolds. Aside from being completely blown away by the “shut up and follow me” blast from the past, this could’ve happened at a doctor’s office or a barber shop in the States.
And when Mr. Eyebrows unloaded that gem on me, I was overcome with a feeling that this conversation counted. It didn’t fit into the Japanese file or the American file, this was a truth about life that transcended language and culture.
Yes, I honestly thought that most other people have stability and don’t worry about the future the way that I do. I get caught in my own little cloud and forget that there are six billion other people on the planet who have a lot of the same concerns.
