Recently SO (my wife) and I were talking about her nieces and nephews (she has 10 of them) and I was reminded of an incident that occurred shortly after we moved to Jakarta. For a little background, SO and I met and got married in Australia while she was studying there, and then moved to Indonesia shortly after.
Anyway, back to the story. H (name withheld to avoid embarrassment for H and any possible harm he may do me if he reads this) is now in his late teens and studying at university, but at the time he was around 2 or 3 years old.
From the time I arrived, H and I got on like wild fire. He took an instant liking to me and I thought he was adorable, we spent endless hours playing together and hanging out. Which proves, I have no doubt, that what SO says about me being immature is highly accurate.
On this particular night, we went out to dinner as a group with H and his parents and a few others from SO’s family. This was a common occurence, SO’s family are very close and quite often spend time together. Plus, with me being new to the family they were all eager to take me out and show me around this fabulous new country.
As was normal, H was seated beside me while we ate, and we were joking around together.
Now to understand the next part you need to know that I was (am?) a big fan of “The Simpsons” and had a habit of slapping my hand to my forehead and saying “D’oh” (a la Homer) when someone said or did something silly.
Being a genius, I decided it would be fun to teach H to do the same thing. I mean, what could be more awesome than a 2 year old doing a Homer Simpson impersonation? So I showed him a couple of times how I did it, by hitting (not too hard) my head with my palm. Then I took his hand and put it against his head and got him to say D’oh. After a few times I thought he had probably gotten it, so I told him to do it himself.
After thinking for a second, he took his hand, said “D’oh” and slapped my head as hard as he could. Not exactly what I had in mind, but everyone around seemed to enjoy it. And I swear H’s father was laughing the hardest.
It’s not the greatest of stories I know, but after all this time it still brings a smile to my face remembering it, and reminds me of how open and welcoming SO’s family was to the strange white guy she brought home with her.
What a lovely and cute boy… Haha!