I was perusing Facebook, just a few minutes ago, and I came across this article from The Onion (1)
Area Mother Doesn’t See Why Thai People Need To Make Food So Spicy
Someone had commented that their mom pronounced Thai "thigh".... and that sparked a memory.....
A former coworker of mine asked me one day, "Have you ever tried thigh food?"
I chuckled and said to him, "Mark, it's pronounced tie."
I laughed as he turned to me, incredulous, and asked, "How did you learn that?"
--now here I will mention that Mark is older than I am by a handful of years, and it truly surprised me that he, in fact did not know this.
So, I told him this story:
"when I was about 7 years old,... during the Vietnam War (Southeast Asia: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand).... I kept hearing "Thailand" on the tv and radio. Now, I spent chunks of time alone in the back seat of the car (we went "bumming" a lot, visiting friends and relatives)..... and I pondered many things while riding in the car. So, on a particular day I was pondering Thailand, and neck ties,... in my child's mind trying to see how those 2 things could be connected. I knew that Thailand was a far away land,... and neckties are pretty, and we knew a man who had traveled the world -who had pretty, hand-painted neckties from some far-away land (Japan actually). So, I tried putting 2 and 2 together....
"Mom, can I ask you a question?"
"Okay, what do you want to ask me?"
This came totally out of left field as far as my Mom was concerned, "Is Thailand where they make neckties?" --it made perfect sense to my childish mind after all.
"Oh!" I wish I could have seen her face.... and I will always wonder if my Dad was listening to my question at all.
My Mother was big on learning and reading, and she had a fairly decent library at home,... so, of course, we learned somethings. I do not recall exactly what was said,.... but I recall that in her answer she was amused by my idea. "No, neckties do not come from Thailand".
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| a reasonable representation of the patterns of neckties my father owned |
I can recall sitting in the back seat, a little disappointed that neckties did not grow on trees in Thailand, nor are there huge warehouses full of Asian women (which is really what my innocent mind pictured) with sewing machines, carefully sewing neckties in mass production for men all over the world.
Even though I do not have a recollection of what transpired after my question, I know that we looked in some books. (2) I know that an Atlas of the World was laid out on a table in our home. We looked at Southeast Asia,... perhaps we even perused an older World Atlas and found that Thailand was previously known as Siam (3).
Anyway, at 7, I was fast approaching the age where I paid attention and heard everything, and began to understand things. That the world is not just families, happily living near each other, and spending long amounts of time with each other. The world is not comprised of families who "go bumming", which was my father's particular lingo for "let's go visit someone, I have not yet decided which direction we will go".
I had started to become aware of a world outside of my little bubble of existence.... and that will be another blog post for another day.....
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| Thai restaurants were new to the area when Mark asked me whether I had ever had "thigh" food. |
References:
(1)The Onion is an American digital media company and news satire organization that publishes articles on international, national, and local news
(2) Regarding books in our home I refer you to a previous blog entry:
Books Are In My Soul (March 13, 2017)
(3) Siam officially renamed Thailand
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