Snake Snake Fish Fish is an ongoing series based around Thai idioms/phrases/colloquialisms written about and illustrated by Cloé Fortier-King and guest contributors.
GUEST EDITION: This week, Kayla Kawalec is the contributing author of the Snake Snake Fish Fish column
Kayla Kawalec, 134 YinD
I started to feel the itch on the ride back from a trip to Bangkok during Pre-Service Training. The trip was partly a chance to take a break from our packed training schedule and partly a “test” of our developing language skills outside of the classroom. Regardless of the intention, it was a good opportunity to get out of the country and into the city for the weekend. My friends and I left “the Big Mango” (a much better name for Bangkok, in my opinion) full of “exotic, foreign foods” like tacos and margarita pitchers, slightly hungover from the latter and with lighter wallets, paying for it all out of our modest volunteer allowance. And now – I was itching, and not just to get back to training.
I was sitting in the front seat of a sweaty 12 passenger van, praying that gray smoke wasn’t about to start pouring out of the air vents like it did on the ride there. This, by the way, was just as strange and terrifying as it sounds and we never got a reasonable explanation for why it happened. Chalk it up to part of our training to “expect the unexpected”, I guess. Distracted by the possibility of another smoke out, I scratched my head, blaming the sweat for the irritation. It wasn’t until I was still scratching after a refreshing bucket shower back at my host family’s house that night, that I started to suspect the pestering itch might be… exactly that.
I sat, abashed, at my host mom’s sewing table as she used the table light to search my scalp like I was one of our many pets that she combed for fleas every night. She snapped the first offender between her fingernails and with it died my 28 year streak of louselessness. In Thai, when you have a disease, sickness, or are otherwise plagued, the literal translation is that you “are” that affliction. And I was, mortifyingly, lice.
Months later, I was talking with my Thai tutor, and we had just spent the last hour discussing my packed schedule at my permanent site and my inability (both prescribed and self-inflicted) to step back. I went back and forth, one minute lamenting about the grind of biking to two or three schools a day, and the next, meekly admitting that I was looking for a way to avoid cutting out any of my seven schools next term. At one point, I picked up the 2-month-old kitten that I’d recently taken home after it was abandoned at one of my schools. I griped, “And as if I wasn’t tired enough already, this guy certainly isn’t helping the situation,” gesturing to the tiny terror who had been keeping me up with his nightly zoomies for the past week. My tutor actually laughed out loud and said, “Kayla หาเหาใส่หัว (hãa hão sàai huãa),” a Thai idiom that directly translates to “looking for lice to put on your own head.” I immediately flashed back to sitting at my host mom’s sewing table, uncomfortable, overwhelmed, and, on top of it all, bothered at myself for feeling that way about something completely out of my control.
It didn’t take long, of course, to understand that this was just a Thai version of a refrain I’ve heard my whole life, a variation of: “You’ve certainly taken on a lot” or “You really don’t like to sit still, do you?” The latter, I literally heard from a teacher at one of my schools the very next week (also while discussing the new furry responsibility I’d added to my already full plate). I thought back to PST when I actually was lice, and how I felt helpless against the very obvious cause of my anxiety at the time. Then, I flashed forward to the metaphorical lice causing me trouble now: my workload, the extracurriculars I’ve picked up, the immense pressure I put on myself, most of which is in my power to change, and it wasn’t hard to make the connection. Creating more difficulties for myself is practically my part-time, also unpaid, job. By taking on greater and greater challenges, I’m constantly looking for trouble to add, like lice on a head.
This isn’t a story with a pretty bow or a tidy ending. I’ll be learning and re-learning how to take on a little less and sit still a little more throughout the rest of service, if not the rest of my life, I’m sure of it. Between us, I’m pretty sure I’ll keep my full school schedule next term, but maybe I’ll spread out the schools over two weeks instead of jamming them into one. And I have no intention of releasing my personal mouse, lizard and bug assassin any time soon (even if he’s about to approach the dreaded teenage years).
Rest assured that the irony isn’t lost on me, though, as I sit up, late into the night – after teaching, lesson planning, tutoring and getting tutored myself, editing this publication, and doing all of the myriad other things that fill my days, and spend just a little more of my time with my own trouble – combing him for fleas.
Sticky Rice 