Sh٪t You May Not Know

When I moved to Morden (for the second time) in 1999, I bought a small house as a fixer-upper.  It needed a lot of work but I knew how to do the work and I got a good deal on the house so for me as a bachelor it was a pretty sweet deal.  The house was (and still is) right behind the Chinese restaurant and so was not immune to the various aromas that are part of that whole deal.

A couple of weeks after I moved in, I was out in the back yard on a particularly beautiful fall morning and noticed the old china-man up on the building clearing leaves and other debris off his roof.  

I said, “Hi there, how you doin?”

He said something in a mix of English and Chinese that I had absolutely no hope of understanding.

I said, “Pardon me?”

The china-man (whom I later discovered was named “Wee”) repeated whatever it was he had originally said, this time gesturing towards the various large trees that were growing in my yard alongside his building. 

Eventually I grasped that he was trying to tell me that I should be getting rid of these trees so that they would quit plugging up the drains on his roof because apparently the roof had been leaking.

I'm thinking that there was no way I was going to be cutting down these trees any time soon since they were probably 80 years old and I love big trees, so I said, “Maybe you should talk to Mike about it.” (Mike's the guy he rented the building from) to which Wee responded, “I TAA TO MY O LADY!”

I said, “Pardon me?”

“I TAA TO MY O LADY!”

“Sorry, what was that?”

“I TAA TO MY O LADY!”

“You talked to who?”

“I TAA TO MY O LADY!”

This went on for quite some time and I didn't really think that I was understanding him perfectly but all the while I'm thinking, 'Man, don't bring her into this!  What are you talking to her about it for, what's she gonna do?'

Maybe his wife was upset that there was water coming through the roof and dripping onto the chicken balls or something.

Then finally it hit me and like lightning from heaven this epiphany made me realize that what he was actually saying was, “I TALKED TO MIKE ALREADY!”

Still reeling from this sudden realization, I said, “So... you talked to Mike, did ya?”

Wee said, “I taa to my o lady.”

“All right, so what did Mike say?”

“MY SAY I TAA TO YOO!”

At this point I politely excused myself and retreated inside to crack open a cold beer, deciding that the day would be much better spent indoors.