“Got the message that,
I gotta be a wild one (Wild, wild, child).
Ooh, yeah, I’m a wild one (Wild, wild
child).
Gonna break it loose,
Gonna keep ‘em moving wild,
Gonna keep a’swinging, baby,
I’m a real wild child.”
From the song, “Real Wild Child” by Ivan
My three year-old son can be difficult for
me to handle sometimes. He is a bit of a
wild child.
For instance, I have had big difficulties
when trying to take him to his nursery.
It is about 10 or 15 minutes away from our house on foot. I have been trying to help my wife by taking
our son to the nursery some mornings. I
can’t do it myself because I am blind and it would be too dangerous. But three days a week a guide comes round to
help me go to the supermarket, or barber or whatever. So on those days the guide, my son, and I have
been going to the nursery together.
Unfortunately, my son usually doesn’t want
to go to the nursery. Because of the
coronavirus, we kept him at home for a couple of months, and he realises that
he prefers this to running around in a group of screaming kids. I can’t really blame him for that. When he is in a really bad mood, he starts
screaming and kicking off his shoes, and refusing to walk. Because the guide is a lady in her seventies,
I can’t ask her to carry my son. So I
carry him, with him still squirming about and screaming in my ear, and trying
to kick off his shoes. It is no use
reasoning with him or waiting for the tantrum to end. He can keep it going seemingly forever.
So I have to walk carrying this wild child
in front of me, stepping very carefully to avoid bumping into things I cannot
see. I can’t use my white cane to check
the ground in front of me, because I can’t hold my son with just one arm. My guide holds my shoulder and tries to push
me straight ahead, or to the left or the right.
Somehow, the three of us have got to move like this across several busy
roads and along streets that have no pavements.
The last time this happened, my son’s kicking to try and force his shoes
off started pushing my trousers down just as we were crossing a road. I had to hurry to the other side before we
were struck by a car, or my underwear was revealed to the world. What a strange sight we must be to passers
by!
Maybe little by little my son will get used
to his nursery again and stop fighting so hard to avoid going there. But my mother says that I was the same at
that age, and always had to be carried kicking and screaming to my nursery. So maybe he has the wild child gene, and it will
stay with him until he passes it onto his own children. I’m going to buy a stronger belt for my
trousers.
Vocabulary:
to handle something–to manage (a situation
or problem)
to squirm–to twist your body about,
especially because of nervousness or discomfort
to reason with somebody – to try to make
someone understand your point of view, or to change their opinion through
discussion
a tantrum – a childish show of anger
a gene – something passed on from parent to
child, which can cause a change in characteristics, such as eye-colour
In the story so far, Mummy, Daddy, and the
little sumo (three years old) tried to buy some Moon Cola from a vending
machine. The front of the vending
machine opened and they went inside.
Then the vending machine rose above the Earth like a rocket with the
three inside…
The vending machine kept going up and up,
and soon they could see the Earth below them.
“I hope we will be safe,” said Mummy. “I have never been in space before. I wonder where the vending machine can be
taking us? All we did was try to buy
some Moon Cola. We didn’t ask to go into
space!”
“Moon Cola?” said the little sumo. “Then maybe the vending machine is taking us
to the moon!”
*
The little sumo was right. Soon through the window, they could see a
silvery grey shape.
“What’s that?” asked the little sumo. “It looks like the silver coin we put into
the vending machine!”
“That’s the moon!” said Daddy. “It looks silvery grey because there is no
water, and no grass on it. And it is
getting closer!”
The surface of the moon got closer and
closer, and then the vending machine landed on the surface with a little bump.
“Oh dear!” said Mummy. “There is no water or grass on the moon. There is no air on the moon either! We didn’t bring any space-suits with us, so
we can’t breathe if we go outside!”
“Yes, you’re right!” said Daddy. “Maybe we should ask the vending machine to
take us back to Earth.”
The little sumo was about to start looking
for a button which might make the vending machine go back to Earth, when he
noticed something moving outside the window.
It was a large grey creature with three legs and eight arms, and its
head was growing out of its belly button.
In one of its arms it seemed to be holding something shiny and red. It started running towards the vending
machine.
“Oh dear,” said Daddy. “I think it wants to chop and eat us. Quickly, let’s try to find a button which
will take us back to Earth!”
Click! – Clang! Kloonk – Klunk! The moon monster was feeling and pushing against
the outside of the vending machine.
Just then the little sumo saw a blue and green
button next to the window. He pressed
it!
And then they could see the moon monster
getting smaller below them. The vending
machine was rising high above the moon.
The little sumo watched as the moon monster waved his eight arms at
them. “That’s strange,” he said. “It is not holding that shiny red thing in
its hand any more.”
“Never mind that,” said Daddy. “Well done for finding the right button,
little sumo! I think we are going back
to the Earth now.”
The vending machine rose high above the
moon, then turned around and began to drop slowly towards the Earth. Looking through the window, Mummy, Daddy and
the little sumo saw the Earth, then they passed through a white cloud, then
they saw Tokyo getting bigger before them, and finally landed in the same spot
where the grey vending machine had always been.
Mummy opened the door and they all got out
of the vending machine, and looked about at the ordinary street of Tokyo.
“That was lucky,” said Daddy. “I thought that the moon monster was going to
attack and break the vending machine.”
“Let’s go back home!” said Mummy.
“Wait!” said the little sumo. “I want to check and see if we can get our
Moon Cola.”
The little sumo opened the flap at the
bottom of the vending machine, to search where the drinks usually fall into
when you select and pay for them. He
felt around with his hand until he touched something cold. He pulled it out. It was a shiny red can of Moon Cola.
“So the moon monster wasn’t trying to chop
and eat us,” said Daddy.
“No,” said Mummy. “He was giving us our Moon Cola.”
“I wonder what Moon Cola tastes like?” said
the little sumo, and he smiled happily.
Vocabulary:
to chop something–to cut something up into
small pieces with repeated strong blows or cuts (eg. I chopped some vegetables
to make a salad.)
a flap – a thin covering which hangs in
front of an opening, and which can be pushed or pulled open (eg. A cat flap is
a door which cats can push open)
In part 1, Mummy and Daddy and the three
year-old little sumo went for a walk in Tokyo and became thirsty. They saw a vending machine selling “Moon
Cola”, and decided to buy some. But
after putting their money in the vending machine, nothing happened. So the little sumo pulled open the front of
the machine, and they all climbed inside to take a look around.
Just then the door closed behind them! For a moment it was dark, but soon a pale
grey light began to shine inside the little box. Then they could hear a voice – a sort of
shiny, metal, vending machine voice – and it was saying, “Five, four, three,
two, one…”
“Oh dear,” said Mummy. “I hope we will be all right.
*
“Lift off!” said the vending machine.
And it began to rise off the ground.
When a rocket lifts off, the astronauts
have to lie flat, because it feels like they are being pushed very hard towards
the ground. It is like lying in bed and
being sat on by an elephant. But the
vending machine was different. Going up
in a vending machine feels a bit like going up in an elevator. You feel a little bit dizzy, but you don’t
have to lie down.
“Look!” shouted the little sumo, “I have
found a window!”
On the far side of the little box, one part
of the wall was made of glass. The glass
was at just about the right height for the little sumo to look out of, but
Mummy and Daddy had to crouch down to look through it.
“There’s the train station!” said Daddy.
“And there’s our house!” said Mummy.
The vending machine was rising higher and
higher, and Tokyo was becoming smaller and smaller. Soon they couldn’t see individual buildings
or people, but they could see the whole of Tokyo below them, and the sea, in
Tokyo Bay.
“It looks amazing!” said Mummy.
But suddenly everything outside the little
window became white.
“What has happened?” asked Daddy. “Why can’t we see anything any more?”
“Maybe it is snowing?” said the little
sumo. “Maybe that is why everything is
white.”
The vending machine went up some more, and
a white cloud suddenly appeared below them.
“We couldn’t see anything because we were
inside a cloud!” said Daddy. “And now
that we are above it, we can see again!”
The vending machine kept going up and up,
and soon they could see the Earth below them.
“I hope we will be safe,” said Mummy. “I have never been in space before. I wonder where the vending machine can be
taking us? All we did was try to buy
some Moon Cola. We didn’t ask to go into
space!”
“Moon Cola?” said the little sumo. “Then maybe the vending machine is taking us
to the moon!”
*
I didn’t have enough space in today’s blog
to finish the story. So I will have to
finish it in part 3 next week. How will
Mummy, Daddy and the little sumo survive in space? Will they ever get to drink that Moon
Cola? Find out next time!
Vocabulary:
Lift off – This is said when a rocket is
fired and begins to rise above the surface of the Earth
to feel dizzy – to have a feeling of
spinning around, and losing your balance
to crouch down–to bend your legs to make
your body or head lower
It can be hard for three people to live in
a small apartment in Tokyo, mostly unable to go outside, especially if one of
the people is a demanding three year-old.
So I have been trying many different ways to keep a small child
amused. One way has been to make up
stories with him. We start with, “Once
upon a time”, and continue from there.
Mostly I continue the story, but my son makes things up too.
Here is an example of a story which my son
and I came up with together. Can you
guess which bits were created by a three year-old?
The Little Sumo and the Moon Cola (part 1):
Once upon a time, the little sumo, who was
three years old, was walking the streets of Tokyo with Mummy and Daddy.
“I’m thirsty,” said the little sumo.
“Okay,” said Daddy. “Let’s stop at a vending machine and buy
something to drink.”
So they all walked until they came to a
vending machine. If they hadn’t been so
thirsty, they probably wouldn’t have noticed the vending machine. That’s because it was grey, and was the same
colour as the wall behind it.
Mummy looked at the drinks on sale in the
vending machine. There was Coca Cola,
Pepsi Cola, Dr Pepper, and Moon Cola.
Mummy read the list of available drinks aloud. “That’s a shame! They don’t have any water, or drinks the
little sumo would like,” she said.
“I want moon cola!” said the little sumo.
“I’ve never heard of moon cola,” said
Daddy. “It might be interesting to try
it.
So they decided to buy some moon cola, and
give it a try.
Mummy gave the little sumo a coin to place
in the vending machine. The coin was
round and silver, and the light sparkled from it. The little sumo put it into the slot in the
vending machine.
Mummy pressed the button for the moon cola,
but nothing happened. “That’s strange,”
she said. “The moon cola is not coming
out of the machine.”
“Try and get your money back then,” said
Daddy. “It must be sold out.”
But the money was not returned either. The vending machine seemed to have swallowed
it up, and was not going to give it back.
“Let me try!” said the little sumo. And he pulled on the front of the vending
machine.
It opened, like a door!
Inside, there was no cola to be seen, and
no money. But there was a little square
space, like in an elevator.
The little sumo stepped inside. Mummy and Daddy went inside too, to have a
look around.
Just thenthe door closed behind them! For a moment it was dark, but soon a pale
grey light began to shine inside the little box. Then they could hear a voice – a sort of
shiny, metal, vending machine voice – and it was saying, “Five, four, three,
two, one…”
“Oh dear,” said Mummy. “I hope we will be all right.”
*
I don’t want to make this blog post too
long. So I’ll post the second part of
the story next week. I hope the family
will be all right. I wonder if the
little sumo will ever find his moon cola?
Vocabulary:
a vending machine–a machine which sells
things such as food and drinks
to sparkle – to shine brightly with flashes
of light
“That’s a shame” – That is very
unfortunate, or regrettable
a slot – a small, narrow space for
inserting something such as a coin
I wonder what kind of pizza Jesus would
have eaten?
Perhaps we could ask Softbank’s CEO,
Masayoshi Son. According to recent news,
after he was criticised for his performance due to huge losses suffered by
Softbank, he compared himself to Jesus.
“Jesus was misunderstood too,” he is reported to have said. He later apologised.
One of the miracles that Jesus is famous
for is the Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes. With just a few loaves of bread and a few fish,
he was somehow able to feed thousands of people.
Perhaps Masayoshi Son has been trying to
perform his own food miracle – the Magic Money Pizza.
The owner of a pizza restaurant, who did
not offer home delivery for his luxury pizzas, was very surprised to find that
his pizzas were available on a food home-delivery app called DoorDash. The restaurant owner was even more surprised
to find that customers could buy his pizzas on this home-delivery app for less
money than he was selling them for in his restaurant. He sold deluxe pizzas for 24 Dollars in his
restaurant, which were available on-line for 16 Dollars.
Confused, the restaurant owner asked his
friend to order 10 deluxe pizzas from his restaurant on the DoorDash app. His friend paid 160 Dollars. Sure enough, the company DoorDash paid the
restaurant 240 Dollars for the pizzas.
The restaurant owner was now able to make a profit by selling pizzas to
himself. He started to maximise his
profits by selling pizzas to himself which had no topping.
DoorDash is apparently happy to make a loss
for a while in order to show restaurant owners that they are able to attract
lots of custom. The losses are supported
by investors such as Softbank and their CEO Masayoshi Son.
I usually charge 3,000 Yen for a 50 minute
English lesson. But if DoorDash would
like to charge 2,000 Yen for the same lesson, and pay me 3,000 Yen, I will
happily teach myself. I am such an
experienced teacher that I could even do it in my sleep.
Vocabulary:
a loaf (many loaves) – an amount of bread
which is baked and shaped, usually before being cut into slices
“Magic Money Pizza” – This is based upon
the “Magic money tree” – the idea that money can be gotten for free and will
never run out (eg. That politician has promised to spend lots and lots of money
which the country cannot afford. Has he
found the magic money tree?)
Sure enough – As expected
I used to live in Osaka, and I found a
lovely local izakaya near my apartment.
I made friends with the owner. I learned how to play shogi there with some
of the regular customers. I tried
various foods for the first time, such as ocha-zuke and yaki-onigiri.
One day I was sitting at the counter with
my Australian friend. We were just drinking sho-chu and chatting. A middle-aged Japanese guy came and sat at
the counter, next to us.
He tried to engage us in conversation, but
at that time my friend and I did not speak Japanese very well, and the newcomer
didn’t speak English well either. We
were not too interested in talking to him, and just exchanged a few smiles,
said, “Hmmm,” a few times, and went back to our drinking.
Then the guy seemed to get annoyed that we
were ignoring him. He tapped me on the
shoulder. I turned around to look at
him. He held up one of his hands, which
was missing two fingers.
“I am yakuza. I am your friend,” he said.
There was a pause for a moment as my friend
and I gazed at his missing fingers.
“Umm, hey, great! Yeah!
Let’s be friends!” we said.
Suddenly we didn’t want to make this guy angry.
He bought us some more alcohol and we drank
together, trying to communicate in a mixture of broken English and broken
Japanese. The man’s wife and son were
also in the izakaya, but they had been sitting in other seats away from the
counter. The yakuza guy called them
over. His son seemed very young – maybe
about 13 years old. The son and the
father exchanged some very harsh words with each other. The father was asking his son to take off his
shirt and show us his tattoos. The son
didn’t want to do it, and shouted angrily at his father. The father shouted angrily back, seeming to
threaten his son with violence.
Eventually, scowling, the teenager lifted
up his shirt. His shoulder and arm were
covered in huge dragon tattoos.
The poor boy had no chance to choose a
different life for himself. He might
have been smart enough to be a lawyer or doctor. But he would find it difficult to be anything
else in life but a yakuza because of those tattoos, and that father.
I hope my own son is clever enough to walk
a different path than his old man has.
“Stay away from sho-chu!” is my humble advice to him.
Vocabulary:
to tap someone on the shoulder – to touch
someone lightly on the shoulder in order to attract their attention
broken (English) – (English) which is not
fluent, or basic and containing many mistakes or pauses
to scowl–to show an angry or bad-tempered
expression
one’s old man – one’s father (casual)
The evil hunchbacked Sicilian Vizzini has
kidnapped the Princess Buttercup, and he holds a knife to her throat. The man in black wants to rescue her, and has
challenged Vizzini to a battle of wits.
The winner will take custody of the princess, and the loser will
die. The man in black takes two goblets
of wine, and some deadly iocaine poison.
He turns away from Vizzini and puts the poison in one goblet of
wine. Vizzini doesn’t know which goblet
of wine has been poisoned, and must choose which one to drink from.
Edited extract from “The Princess Bride,”
by William Goldman:
"Guess which goblet to drink from?"
Vizzini cried. "I don't guess. I think. I consider. Then I decide. But I
never guess."
"The battle of wits has begun,"
said the man in black. "It ends when you decide and we drink the wine and
find out who is right and who is dead. We both drink, need I add, and swallow,
naturally, at precisely the same time."
"It's all so simple," said Vizzini.
"All I have to do is deduce, from what I know of you, the way your mind
works. Are you the kind of man who would put the poison into his own glass, or
into the glass of his enemy?"
"You're stalling," said the man
in black.
"I'm relishing this," answered
the Sicilian. "No one has challenged my mind in years and I love it. . . .
By the way, may I smell both goblets?"
"Be my guest. Just be sure you put
them down the same way you found them."
The Sicilian sniffed his own glass; then he
reached across the kerchief for the goblet of the man in black and sniffed
that. "As you said, it’s odourless."
"As I also said, you're
stalling."
The Sicilian smiled and stared at the wine
goblets. "Now a great fool," he began, "would place the wine in
his own goblet, because he would know that only another great fool would reach
first for what he was given. I am clearly not a great fool, so I can clearly
not reach for your wine."
"That's your final choice?"
"No. Because you knew I was not a
great fool, so you would know that I would never fall for such a trick. You
would count on it. So I can clearly not reach for mine either."
"Keep going," said the man in
black.
"I intend to." The Sicilian
reflected a moment. "We have now decided the poisoned cup is most likely
in front of you.”
The man in black was starting to get
nervous. "Truly you have a great intellect," whispered the man in
black.
"You have fought and beaten my giant,
which means you are exceptionally strong, and exceptionally strong men are
convinced that they are too powerful ever to die, too powerful even for iocane
poison, so you could have put it in your cup, trusting on your strength to save
you; thus I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you."
The man in black was very nervous now. "You're
just trying to make me give something away with all this chatter," said
the man in black angrily. "Well it won't work. You'll learn nothing from
me, that I promise you."
"I have already learned everything
from you," said the Sicilian. "I know where the poison is."
"Only a genius could have deduced as
much. You cannot frighten me," said the man in black, but there was fear
all through his voice.
"Shall we drink then?"
"Pick, choose, quit dragging it out,
you don't know, you couldn't know."
The Sicilian only smiled at the outburst.
Then a strange look crossed his features and he pointed off behind the man in
black. "What in the world can that be?" he asked.
The man in black turned around and looked.
"I don't see anything."
"Oh, well, I could have sworn I saw
something, no matter." The Sicilian began to laugh.
"I don't understand what's so
funny," said the man in black.
"Tell you in a minute," said the
hunchback. "But first let's drink."
And he picked up his own wine goblet.
The man in black picked up the one in front
of him.
They drank.
"You guessed wrong," said the man
in black.
"You only think I guessed wrong,"
said the Sicilian, his laughter ringing louder. "That's what's so funny. I
switched glasses when your back was turned."
There was nothing for the man in black to
say.
"Fool!" cried the hunchback.
He kept laughing until the iocane powder
took effect, and he suddenly died.
The man in black stepped quickly over the
corpse, then ripped the blindfold from the Princess's eyes.
"You killed him," she whispered.
"I let him die laughing," said
the man in black.
Buttercup rubbed her wrists, stopped,
massaged her ankles. She took a final look at the Sicilian. "To
think," she murmured, "all that time it was your cup that was
poisoned."
"They were both poisoned," said the
man in black. "I've spent the past two years building up immunity to
iocane powder."
Vocabulary:
to take custody of someone – to take care
or control of someone who cannot look after themselves
precisely - exactly
to deduce something–to arrive at a fact or
conclusion by reasoning
to stall – to deliberately try to waste
time or delay
to relish something – to greatly enjoy
something
“Be my guest.” – Go ahead; Certainly
to sniff something – to breathe in loudly and
sharply through the nose
to drag something out – to make something
last longer than is necessary
a corpse – a dead body
