Pain, pain goes away

A life of pain would be impossible. I hurt pretty bad for more than three weeks from my stupid bike accident and began to feel despair, depression and frustration. I wondered if I was ever going to stop hurting. The good news ... make that great news for me, at least  ... is that the pain in my back subsided. I can sleep, cough, fart and sneeze again without fear of agonizing pain in my chest, ribs, right lung, and back. It's a whole new world. Father Time may be undefeated when it comes to sports and life, but pain strikes fear in the hearts of all mortals. My right ankle still hurts quite a bit, but I can walk and stand well enough to teach. I never sit when I teach, and my ankle throbs afterwards, but that's not really an issue for the White Monkey. l can stand the pain, so to speak, and have even returned to some tai chi in the park after a walk to the coffee shop by the river. When I take my walk to the coffee shop -- about three miles round-trip from our house -- I carry a cane. It's actually a bamboo stick with a rubber tip taken from some crutches. The cane has been invaluable keeping num-nuts on their bikes away from me. People on their bikes here are stupid, selfish and dangerous, and not always in that order. They ride on sidewalks when I'm walking and almost hit me; they cut corners so close they almost hit me when I cross the street; and they come up behind me when I walk in the street and, yes, almost hit me. But I have a solution. My cane goes from a vertical to horizontal position when a bike approaches the White Monkey too closely.  And the morons who want to intimidate the White Monkey or just be stupid seem to get the message. The bikers give me a little room now because they don't want a bamboo stick across their face. I would never try to hurt anyone or be aggressive, but I won't get hit by some idiot who wants to show off. If it's me or the idiot, it ain't gonna be me. That idiot can live with three or more weeks of pain. I've already done that, so I'll pass on another collision.
I lost my cool at Metro with a line-cutter. When you buy cooked food, you have to ring a bell to get a guy or gal to come from the back and serve you. When I tried to make eye contact with the servers instead of ringing the bell, they didn't get it. So I rang the bell, a guy came out, and some woman appears out of nowhere, honest to god bangs into me, and shouted her order of three chicken wings to the server. The guy waited on her and ignored me (the bell ringer), and that's when I kind of lost it. But this crap happens every day here. Happened in Peru, too, but the staff was much nicer in Peru and the weather was the best in the world. Oh, the weather is rough, rough, rough here. Midday temps are in the upper-90s with 90 percent humidity. Rainy season will be a relief, except when I ride the motorbike to work in the rain.
Phuong speaks very good English, but sometimes she doesn't get the words 100 percent correct. But it's OK because her "mistakes" are cute and make me smile.  For example, she assures me that even if a really handsome man from "Hollygood" came on to her, she would still stand by her man, whoever the hell that is. When I tell Phuong about some pinhead who almost hit on his bike, she tells me not to worry about the "slow life" of Bien Hoa. I think she means low life, but slow life works for me as well. And Phuong's college teacher  taught her to start a lot of sentences with "summarize." She'll say things like: "Summarize, I'm tired and hungry. Summarize, the baby is moving a lot today."
My son Alec will be here in 10 days and I'm super excited. Alec is quite handsome. He's no slow life. Summarize, he looks like a guy from Hollygood.