Heffalumps
Saturday, May. 29, 2004 11:21 p.m.
Today K and I saw a commercial for National Geographic Channel's animal documentaries. There was a 5-second clip of a baby elephant being playful (i.e. running around with trunk raised next to Mom and no poacher in sight).
If I could keep any animal as a pet, I would keep an elephant. An Asian elephant. African elephants look mightier and more majestic, but I've never seen them in action except on TV and they apparently have a fierce disposition. The Asian ones that I've seen at the zoo and in Thailand are sweet-natured (okay, I'm not naive they might have been brutalised into submission by their owners). "Intelligent and docile when well treated", says this website.
I told K I thought Awang would make a good name for an elephant (yeah I'm not being very original here so shut up). I asked K what he thought and he just looked at me with that cheeky smile and said, "You mean if you did have an elephant as a pet?" Yes, of course! It's possible! You can buy them at the neighbourhood pet store these days! (Don't know why I'm using exclamations marks, ignore me). He humoured me in the end and came up with a better name, Zozo. Because "zo" is Japanese for elephant. Zozo-san. So adorable. Here Zozo, come get your din-din/sugarcane/bark/leaves/elephant food. Yeah, it works.
Anyway back to the bit about the elephant disposition. "Intelligent and docile when well treated". Hmmm. This probably explains my affinity to elephants. I think elephants and I are similar in many ways. I am certainly intelligent, and though I am not docile by any stretch of the imagination, I sure can live and let live if you give me enough space to roam and do my thing.
And that elephant's memory too. I creep people out all the time when we're talking about something that happened in the past and the facts get blurry and I just set them straight with silly details like what they were wearing the day it happened, who was sitting where, who had to leave and make a phone call, what we ate, etc. I especially remember mean things that people say to me. For example, when CY was first posted to the shithole school I'm currently teaching in, I used to think he was rude and deserved to be beaten, volatile bitch that I can be (okay, I still think he's rude but at least now I know it's intended as acerbic wit). He liked talking about sex and when people gave him strange looks (of surprise/disgust/amusement/ignorance, I know not which) in response, he would say to them, "Stop pretending to be a virgin." It was quite annoying. The virgins felt insulted, the non-virgins felt exposed against their will, because he usually said it loudly. Then during the last dive trip I was on, bloody Johnson joked about how amazing it was that L and I were the same age but "one look so young and one look so old" (quoted verbatim, not responsible for other people's bad English). Old-looking one being me. I am waiting for another opportunity for us to dive together because not being very sharp-witted, Johnson is likely to make the same comment, only this time I have a retort ready: "Yeah, what to do, not everyone can be like you and SB (the dive instructor and his long-time friend), the same age and looking old and ugly together." In Singlish, where it will have more impact. It is my memory! What I remember I cannot ignore.
So my anger towards the school is a circus elephant's anger, anger nursed by the memory of many injustices done unto me by the Ring Master and the animal trainers. It is a good thing this elephant does not incite the other animals like the Bengal tiger and the lions and chimps and horses to revolt. We would all be shot down. Me, I will grow ears like Dumbo and fly up and away from the circus.
P.S. For you ignoramuses, "heffalump" is what Christopher Robin calls the elephant in A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh stories.
Older entries
Ramadan - 08 October 2006
Where I Have Been - 03 October 2006
Baby Talk - 10 August 2006
6 Weeks of Separation - 16 July 2006
Unacceptable Rudeness - 21 June 2006