I am sitting at a high table in a KFC, the one an across away from the local movie cinema - the Locomotive. I am enjoying my dinner there which is a set of oily snacks: french fries, chicken nuggets, chicken wings, and drumsticks, all unhealthy and indulging food accompanied with what I think of as one of the best combinations in the world - a large cup of latte. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term caffè latte was first used in English in 1867 by William Dean Howells in his essay "Italian Journeys". Kenneth David maintains that "...breakfast drinks of this kind have existed in Europe for generations, but the caffè version of this drink is an American invention”. This imperial drink which didn’t make entrance to menus in the world until 20th century has long been a precious morning/afternoon/evening kick-up drink for me.
While I am brooding the history of latte, a fleshy guy comes in. He’s around 35 with a blue heavy down coat, successfully making him from a guy of XXXL to one of XXXXL. He approaches to a family table, gets a writing pad and a large name card out, showing both to the dad at table. Without further observation, I know for sure he is one of the “deaf-mute” groups. The next thing he’d do is to give those costumers some signal-language education about the right way to spend your sweat-eared money and solicit some for the good of the special community.
No surprise, in about a minute or two, somebody pats my back. He must mistake me as a boy who is spending after-school time in KFC. But sorry to disappoint him, I am a 23 non-gender-assumed human who couldn’t get rid of his or her baby cheek and has a really warm and mean spirit. I turn my “sullen” face to his sanguine and satisfied one. I bet he must have done a good job so far. He tries to direct my eyes to the big red headline on his charitable pad. “Do good to the Association for the Disable” the bolded headline says. “You got yourself an Association for the Disable without getting fake-marriage with your friends? Could you tell me how to make that miracle happen? I need an association for SLGBTQI here. Could you help with that? What does the “S” stand for here? Oh, I add it by myself. It means “straight”, because I think straight people need help as well. Because the number of marriages between gay and straight are keeping racketing up those days. Straights are the victims according to themselves and the media. We need to speak up for them in the honor of being a member of the human society, right?” I talk fast in mind.
Seeing an ominous omen of getting money out of my pocket, he starts to persuade me in signal language. “What are the chances of a Chinese reasoning an English into giving his or her money? Nobody stands a fair position here. Neither party can actually talk sense into each other’s mind here, okay?” I have the caption for this scene in my mind again.
Without a shadow of doubt, I begin to “signal-language” back to him, a thing most people should have done long ago when this kind of guy start his education part started. I make as many as complicated signs with my fingers, oscillating them in the air, right in front of his eyes. I also decorate the finger show with a bunch of serious and sincere facial elements. It works perfectly. The guy freezes in the happy KFC music right away. “I bet you have nothing to respond me, because the best and only sign you know and you can make now is the thumb thank you stuff.” I am sniggering in my mind with a calm and innocent face toward him. I could smell of the meltdown in his heart I think. He does it, a bent-thumb thank you sign and head out of the KFC, vanishing into the crowds.
Maybe I need to start to collect protection fees from those guys. I can get money and they can be free of those smart and mean people like me.
“Get a job, dummy. Life is too short to be an amusing ‘deaf-mute’.”