Hyper-chondriac (16 page)

“Hey, Mr. Chow. Did you read today's newspaper?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, corduroy pillows are really making
headlines
!”

Then Mr. Chow would laugh as if it was the funniest joke he had heard since Chiang Kai-shek moved his government to Taiwan and Parkinson's guy would shake even more radically.

“Hey”—Steve was going for an encore—“good news. You don't have to lock your doors anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because the Energizer Bunny was finally arrested. He was charged with battery.”

More laughter and quivering. Hadn't Mr. Chow spent one hour of his ninety-two years flipping through a
Mad
magazine?

The hour was finally up and I was relieved. I felt I'd wasted more time and money on yet another shenanigan. Even the slippers were a horrible investment. Plus, to be honest with you, I'd rather see a medley of really bad impressions than hear a single pun. However, oddly enough, the rest of the day I was noticeably calmer and happier. It was a miracle.

I guess the monotony made my brain realize that I didn't have to be busy all the time. By focusing on the minutiae of the poses, the breathing, the shifting of my weight and the standing, I didn't have room for other nonrelevant thoughts to drift into my head. I had unlocked the secret to Tai Chi in a single class! I felt recharged, but not in a hyper way like when I wake up after a good night's sleep. Maybe this Mr. Chow guy was onto something. I'd devote my life to Tai Chi, practice in the mornings, play chess at night and live a long, long time with my perfect posture and flawless breathing.

I practiced each morning at home, then went back to class a few days later. Mr. Chow gave me several new movements and corrected the ones he had already given me. Apparently, I wasn't very good at “carrying the ball.” Then he asked me what I did for a living.

“I'm a writer.”

“Oh, writer. Let me see how you write. Sit down.”

I followed him to a wooden bench attached to the wall and sat.

“Now type,” he commanded.

This was the weirdest writing sample I had ever been asked to produce. I halfheartedly pretended to type and for some reason would occasionally smack an imaginary return bar as if I were using a 1923 Underwood, perhaps to make him feel more at home.

“Uh…should I be typing anything in particular?”

“No, just type.”

“Okay.” I kept flailing my fingers in the air. Then I heard a long sigh.

“You're not a good writer.”

My fingers stopped. Fuck you, I thought. Which I believe he sensed.

“I mean your posture is awful for writing,” he qualified. “Just a second.”

Mr. Chow disappeared into his cluttered office and returned carrying a tissue box.

“Put this on your head.”

“Huh?”

“Put this on your head.”

Once again, I did as I was told.

“
Now
type!” he said.

I couldn't even see the imaginary paper I was writing on anymore. Although the upside was that if I sneezed I wouldn't have to look for tissues. I'd be wearing them as a hat.

“So I'm supposed to write with a box of tissues on my head?”

“Yes. It will keep your head and spine in line and help you to relax.”

“You sure?”

“Of course I'm sure. You need to do as I say. I've been teaching this method for almost seventy years.”

“What if it's a box of doughnuts instead?”

“No doughnuts. Tissues.”

I wasn't as funny as Steve.

Once again, this stupid shit seemed to work. Even while I was driving, my seated posture was much more erect and I was especially relaxed. And I didn't have neck and shoulder pain when I was at the keyboard for long stretches. Give me more, old man!

 

As I entered the dojo for my next class, Mr. Chow shook his head in disgust.

“
Still
not walking properly.”

“What now?”

“When you walk, you need to rotate each of your thighs clockwise while each shoulder rotates counterclockwise.”

“Thighs clockwise…” I felt totally bowlegged. If I were in the presence of a cowboy, he'd think I was mocking him.

“Shoulders counterclockwise.”

“Shoulders counterclockwise.”

“And your pelvic area tilts forward and up. Toward the sky.”

“Pelvic up and forward.”

“Forward and up.”

“Isn't that the same thing as up and forward?”

“No.”

“Okay. Forward and up.”

Mr. Chow then slithered behind me and gave me the Heimlich maneuver and I nearly discharged my banana bran muffin on his slippery gray floor.

“Did you think I was choking? What was that for?”

“You need to have your stomach lift your chest. You can do this yourself by making a fist and shoving it into your belly. Go ahead. Try.”

I followed instructions.

“You just made yourself two inches taller,” he declared. “How do you feel?”

“Taller…” I said rather weakly. Although it felt as if I had lacerated my spleen from punching myself in order to acquire the extra height. But I actually
did
seem taller. I was a giant!

I proudly walked around the dojo with my newfound height, just to see if I could remain taller while in motion.

“No!”

What did Mr. Chow want now?

“Yes?” I answered in my new taller voice.

“Don't swing your arms. The ball joints in your shoulders don't move. Only the arm from the elbow down moves. Just your forearms.”

“Got it. No arm swinging, just forearm swinging.”

I practiced walking around my house and giving myself the Heimlich. Nancy told me it looked like I had a stick up my ass, but if it stopped me from making neighbors defecate in our yard, she was all for it. I became obsessed with scrutinizing a profile of my hips and lower spine in the full-length mirror in our bedroom. “Forward and up…counterclockwise…clockwise…no ball joints…shoulder blades go toward opposite walls like wings…”

At parties, I became more concerned with how perfect I could make my posture than to whom I was talking. More often than not, people asked if there was something wrong with me. “Were you in a car accident?” I told them my Tai Chi teacher had instructed me that this was the way to live a better life, and I was interested in a better life and stop judging me and where the hell was the cold beer but not that weak Budweiser crap and maybe they should stop slouching or the rest of their existence would be miserable. I became a connoisseur of posture, correcting my friends' aloud and strangers' inside my head.

Though apparently I wasn't doing a very good job with myself. At the next class, after studying me as I entered the dojo, Mr. Chow told me my brain was in trouble.

“God! Now what?” This was maddening.

“You're walking with your brain.”

“Well, isn't it hard to walk without it?”

“You need to put all the emphasis in your feet. Only then will you walk properly.”

“I thought I
was
using my feet.”

“Too much brain. Not enough feet.”

Was this guy fucking with me?

I was told I had to “demote my brain from five-star general to three-star general and put one star in each foot.” Mr. Chow wanted me to step and push down with each foot and then use the bottom of the foot to pull the body forward so the stress from the spine would be reduced. Christ! Concentrating on the minutiae of breathing, standing, walking and typing was now making me
more
tense and, even worse, draining my Zoloft reserves. Fortunately, Steve's voice was about to take my mind off myself.

“Hey, Mr. Chow…do you know of a good massage place?”

“Sorry, I don't.”

“Darn. Because I fired my masseuse yesterday. She just rubbed me the wrong way!”

Shut up, shaggy! You're not five!

 

The next time I went to class, there was a sign over Mr. Chow's garage door that said Closed. Closed? Why was it closed? Was there a Zamboni cleaning the dojo? Did the wind flip the sign and no one had bothered to flip it back? Had he fallen in the shower? Unless he'd died, I was pissed. I'd just wasted forty-five minutes driving there and now the ride home in rush hour would be even longer. Bread of Shame! Bread of Shame! Just like Kabbalah Ethan said, “Every obstacle we face is a bar of gold!”

I got my answer as to Mr. Chow's whereabouts when I bumped into punster Steve and running tiny-bladdered man in the dojo's driveway. Steve told me that Mr. Chow was an actor and probably had another audition that he'd forgotten to tell his students about. He had just tried out for an Olive Garden commercial and had allegedly recently finished shooting a Citibank spot with Ellen DeGeneres. I learned that this guy with the gray Fu Manchu mustache who was born
before
World War I was getting more acting work than Antonio Sabato Jr.
And
he had an agent!!!
And
a manager!!! I wondered if Mr. Chow nagged Ellen DeGeneres on the set of the Citibank commercial to sit up straight and push her pelvis forward and up…or up and forward…Y'know what? I don't really care what he says, they're the same damn thing!!! I knew Steve was angry too, because no puns left his mouth over the next sixty seconds.

“This actually happens a lot,” Steve told me.

“It does?”

“Yeah, it used to really annoy me when I lived farther away.”

“It's not right,” chimed in tiny-bladdered man, spilling some of his thermos juice on his Dockers.

“I can't even believe it,” said Steve. “I mean the guy's ninety-two and he's a working actor. I'm thirty-two and I can't even get an audition.” Steve was bitter and had a dark side, which I found much more palatable than incessant wordplay.

“It's not right!” said the guy clutching a thermos. “He should at least call or e-mail us.”

“He's gotta tell us some other way besides leaving a sign on his garage,” pleaded Steve.

“It's not right,” repeated tiny-bladdered man. “It's not right.”

Ten seconds later, Parkinson's guy showed up, spotted the Closed sign and just slowly shook his head, which was already shaking.

The four of us decided to confront Mr. Chow at our next class. This behavior was unacceptable, regardless of how old he was. Besides, using his age as an excuse wouldn't work; the guy was still driving across town on his own, walking unaided and upright and memorizing lines. Surely he was capable of remembering to tell his students about schedule changes.

On the other hand, he was just eight years away from living an entire century. Maybe the elderly deserve more slack. Maybe we should all just let this go. Besides, angering an old guy with a lot of giant swords on his walls probably wasn't the best idea in the world. But it was never too late to learn manners and gas was really expensive. Something needed to be said.

Even though I was the newest Tai Chi'er, they wanted me to be the one to confront Mr. Chow. Steve had been going to him for nine years and had never said it bugged him, so it would be weird if he piped up now. And tiny-bladdered guy seemed to have enough of his own problems.

 

“Mr. Chow…” I stammered before our next class. I was about to give a ninety-two-year-old man a lecture about responsibility. “Your students, um, we…would love it if you could…y'know…next time you're not able to teach class…for
whatever reason…
if you could notify us…somehow.”

“You have my phone number on a scrap of paper somewhere,” trembled Parkinson's.

Mr. Chow looked embarrassed.

“Lots of students to call,” he said. “I don't always have time.”

“Well, you could get a website.” I wasn't being an asshole. He was computer savvy. He had a G3; I saw it buried under papers in the garage. “That way all you'd have to do is literally post one announcement on the Internet and people could check it right before they left for class.”

“Website?” Mr. Chow looked intrigued or like he was going to fight me. “Okay. I'll get a website.”

Both sides seemed satisfied with the outcome, and a couple of weeks later Mr. Chow's website was up and running. I read on it that he was starring in a video game in Seattle and would be gone for four days the third week of the next month. Cool. The system was working.

A week later I was practicing “carrying the ball” and “grasping the swallow's tail” when Mr. Chow said he had an announcement: he was raising his prices for the first time in six years.