I know, I know… I’m supposed to be the teacher and he’s supposed to be the student. But the amount that I have learned from Huey over the past couple of months has pretty much rendered eighteen years of formal education completely useless. Allow me to share some of his pearls of wisdom with you.
1. Its OK to have a girlfriend who is four years older than you, as long as you don’t tell her that she is your girlfriend.
Shortly after I arrived here, Huey and I rocked up at the wedding of two members of staff from the lodge. We were still decked up to the nines in full ceremonial gear from the cremation that we had attended earlier in the day. Rather disturbingly, the deceased was an elderly lady from the same family as those who were getting hitched. Apparently the Balinese lunar calendar has ‘good’ days for important ceremonies and these two happened to be on the same day. So having watched grandma getting torched by a couple of gas-powered flame throwers deep in the forest (no joke…), we toddled on up to the village to see day three of the happy couple’s marathon wedding.
Whilst we were there, Huey – who is a bit of a local celebrity, caught the eye of an eleven-year-old girl named Rica. I was unaware at the time, but Huey has informed me that she ‘took his hand’ and they went off to play. How sweet. So over the past couple of months Huey has been full of chatter about Rica and regularly comes to sit on my balcony watching her in silat class. However, Huey warned me a few weeks ago that I mustn’t open my big gob and tell Rica about their relationship because she doesn’t know yet. But that is totally OK.
I wasn’t sure how to explain this one, so I just took it as extraordinary thinking from the boy and went along with it. Since unearthing this revelation, I have embarked on relationships with Jessica Ennis, Lucy Porter, Pippa Middleton’s backside, Helen Skelton, that girl who used to be on ER and was the main character, the brunette one from Sex and the City and Stephen Fry. Just don’t tell them about it.
2. I’m extremely good at art. (Remember, we are judging by the standards of a seven-year-old)
Huey is an extremely enthusiastic artist, although sometimes he needs a little encouragement to broaden his horizons as far as subject matter goes. As his mum recently pointed out, in his bungalow there are currently 22 pictures of boats and one train. We have since added a rather fetching Costa Rican landscape to the wall above the door.
The bungalows in which Huey and I will live when we grow up. They are in Costa Rica.
I haven’t really done an art thing (made art? done art? composed some art? Who knows?) since my third year at high school. Even then, I was far from the model student. I distinctly remember in my first year, not only did we lock our poor, nervous wreck of a teacher in the cupboard for an entire lesson (sorry!), but I spent much of the our term on the renaissance making inappropriate jokes about drawing bell ends. It didn’t help at all that I was simply rubbish at art. I couldn’t draw and my creativity was focused entirely on finding new ways to be disruptive.
My drawing. No way I'm letting him take credit for that beast!
So finding that Huey is incredibly creative has been a bit of a challenge. We regularly paint or draw; Once we did a sort of silhouette thing of the titanic using a toothbrush. Another time we made little boats using the a stack of origami paper and a Youtube video. Although I’m better than I was when I was a teenager, I’m still not quite up to the standard that I should have been fifteen years ago.
My origami skills are second to none. Except for people who do loads of origami. They are probably quite good at it.
3. Books about ships are easier to read than books about anything else.
This little gem came whilst we were discussing a book to read. We discarded ‘Zac and the Dream Pirates’, ‘Fart Powder’, ‘Harry Potter’, ‘Grug Plays Football’ and ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ in favour of Clive Cussler’s epic best-seller ‘Inca Gold’. When asked why he wished to read the book, he simply pointed to the cover and pointed out that because it had a ship on the front it was going to be easier to read.
This justification was further used to indicate why it was taking me so long to read my book. Silly me. It is also the reason why it takes, on average, eight minutes to read a single page of ‘Inca Gold’ while I explain the meaning every third word to him. Damn you Clive Cussler with your expansive vocabulary.
4. I don’t need a girlfriend because I’ll be happier without one.
Apparently I don’t have time for relationships. There are a number of reasons for this, which I shall outline in bullet form. A kind of sub-list if you will.
– I am going to be too busy sailing my pirate ship to Costa Rica and then building my house there.
– Girls are too bossy.
– When girls win painting competitions, they brag about them too much.
– Kissing girls is disgusting. When Huey witnessed a honeymoon couple sharing a cheeky smooch, the look of horror on his face was such that it appeared he had seen a Tyrannosaurus Rex being eaten by a Unicorn wearing a Nazi uniform. I genuinely thought he was in pain until he plucked up the courage to explain what had happened.
– If I tried to get a Balinese girlfriend, I would have to marry her or her family would be ashamed and she would be an outcast. This has become a genuine concern for Huey’s mum, given his recent predicament with Rica.
– I’m too bald so I need to stick some of the hair from my chin on to my head.
5. Poo always makes everything at least 200 times funnier.
“Imagine what would happen if someone pooped in some Christmas wrapping paper and then wrapped it up and gave it to their grandma for Christmas”. “Imagine if a crab crawled up someone’s leg and bit them in the bottom until they did a poo”. “Imagine if someone did a poo and it never stopped”………..
This never stops and yet I continue the endless struggle against bursting with laughter. Must try harder to be a good influence…..
6. The French are bad.
This is my fault….. A little bit. Although mostly the fault of his previous tutor, Sam. You know what they say in politics – always blame the person that you’re replacing.
At some point in the past, some French guests stayed at the lodge and for whatever reason, felt the need to complain. There must have been some discussion in which Sam (from England) must have pointed out that we Brits haven’t always got on too well with the frog eating cheese sniffers from New Deutschland. Can you see where this is going?
Needless to say, a few months discussing the topic with me, in addition to around 8 viewings of ‘Master and Commander’ have convinced him that the French are to be considered enemies of the world. Whoops.
This does, however, pale in comparison to the time that having watched the entire Indiana Jones series, he declared at the dinner table that Germans are Nazis…. within earshot of our German guests. Try explaining THAT to a seven year old who is rapidly developing rather strong xenophobic tendencies. I think we managed admirably.
7. Girls don’t like boys who play the ukulele
Just came straight out with this one. Turned my world upside down. One day I’ll show Rica this picture….
The Huey Blues.
The Badgerwolf 