Robot Monkeys

I need to get out of Southern Illinois. I really need to get out Southern Illinois.

So this past Saturday was my ten year
high-school reunion. Since I finally broke up with Jie for good, and wasn’t able to find an emergency date, my options were:

1. Go to the reunion by myself. There I could hang around married people showing off their spouses, photos of their offspring, or congratulating each other on knocking-up wives (presumably their own). Loads of fun for an unmarried guy without a girlfriend, who lives with his parents, and generally avoids the employment world.
2. Not go. Be alone in my depression waiting for the inevitable phone call from Murph asking where I was saying I should come out to the reunion. I would probably receive more than one call of this type.

Lovely. Depression and reeking of loserdom, or depression and loneliness.

But then, the day before my reunion, a friend of mine asked me to go with him and some friends to Six Flags.

I decided to go to Six Flags. I had been moaning about how I need to go out and meet people, and this seemed like a good opportunity. Also, it avoided the reunion and the inevitable depression associated with it.

There was about 14 people in the group that went, and not everyone knew each other, so I didn’t feel uncomfortable going. As a plus my friend had these two cute Japanese girls with him.

This was turning out to be quite the superior choice.

Their names were Mayumi and Kanako. I started to talk to them, but
something wasn’t right. They both had thick accents. Thick enough where I had to ask them to repeat themselves sometimes. Uhhh…Ok. Whatever. They were cute and friendly. I can deal. Then they asked me to repeat myself a couple of times. Uhhh….Ok. Whatever. They were cute and friendly. I can deal.

Mayumi and Kanako told us what their majors were. Mayumi was studying electrical engineering. Kanako’s answer, gave us not only our Quote of the Day, but also our Ironic Moment of the Day. Her answer: “Eng-a-rr-ish” Not “Engrish“. It was “Eng-a-rr-ish”. She turned a two syllable into a four syllable word.

They were cute. Mayumi was a rider, but Kanako didn’t like roller-coasters. Which gave plenty of opportunities to playfully tease her. Normally, this would be golden, but something wasn’t right. The give-and-take in the conversations were taking too long. You’d ask them a question once. Then twice. Then a third time. Then they’d repeat the question back to you, but it wasn’t the same question. It would be a slightly different question. At which point you think “Sure. Answer that question instead. Let’s just keep this conversation moving.” They were cute and friendly, but…

I have to say, I felt like an idiot, but I didn’t figure it out. I knew something was wrong. I knew they didn’t have a strong enough command over the English language, but for some reason it never occured to me what exactly was wrong with them. Then my friend told me. They were
CESL students, and were only here until the start of the Japanese school year in October.

Let this be a truism. It’s hard to be witty when you have to repeat yourself.

Let me also tell you, that whoever said hitting on foreign girls that don’t speak English is loads of fun, is lying. It’s like pulling teeth. It’s hard to establish a rapport; and when you kind of do, the language barrier gets in the way. It’s like perfoming surgery in oven mitts.

In the end, I didn’t meet anyone that I could go out with. It was fun to hang out with a couple of cute girls, but nothing could really come of it. There’s the language problem. the fact that they’re leaving in less than three weeks, and they’re roommates living with a host family. The main thing is, I avoided depression and have a wonderful memory of this weekend.