s u n n y s i d e u p.

Commenting on joethel's posting , I related my student days experience. Check it out at her blog.

Anyway that really started something and memories of those years became fresh again. Good times and bad times ...

I particularly remember going to a cafe with a friend to have tea. We enjoyed watching people wherever we go. Soon enough, an old woman walked in with her shopping bag. She looked extremely tired and the cold weather wasn't helping at all.

She sat daown about 2 or 3 tables away. We studied her and discussed her possible family, life, former occupation and so on. Then we noticed that she had a mole or a wart on one of her cheeks.

Then it started. My friend started giggling and contorted her face to surpress her laughter. I knew she was going into one of her silly giggling spells. She would laugh at a bug , a train or anything when she got in this mood.

Whispering to me between her sniggering , she told me that it looked like the old woman had 'bab' on her face. ('Bab' is their dialect word for 's**t'). Biting her purse and trying to look normal.

Then to our surprise, the old woman walked to us, wagged her finger at us, and said, " Thats not very polite of you to say that about an old woman. You should be ashamed of yourself !"

We nearly died. But I couldn't resist asking her how she kne what we were saying. She replied,

' I lip-read !' -*

and she walked away disgusted leaving us to look at each other in awe. This time , my friend wasn't laughing or giggling anymore --- just smiling only ! Oh boy !

*( Lip-read is a skill to 'read' the movements of people's lips so as to know what they are talking about. Usually used by people weak at hearing. )