Fung Wah Wah Wah Wah, Wah Wah Wah Wah

One of my all time favorite movie scenes: Christmas dinner at the Chinese restaurant after their home-cooked meal was eaten by the dogs, in "A Christmas Story". I'm sure it's politically incorrect to find their mangled version of 'Deck the Halls' hysterical, but I did and I do. The 10 year-old me and my current self have kept our sense of humor at inappropriate things. Some of them, anyway. Apparently the 17 year-old me also shares this humor, as I can recall an instant with a certain foreign guest speaker and a faulty projector screen in Social Studies one day. Hey, I am... was... and always will be... human. Sometimes laughing is the only exercise I have for days. Allow me my follies.

The title of this blog post is an altogether different Chinese reference though. I am going back East over the holidays and will need to get from New York to Providence (don't feel pity for me, but do send cash) as efficiently as possible. This lead me to buses. And that lead me to the mythical Chinatown buses. I've heard of them for years but never took one when I lived in New York. Allegedly, they run back and forth between New York and Boston for a ridiculously low fare. And this afternoon, with the magic of the internet and a twinkle of pixie dust, I found proof of such a bus! By proof I mean an internet site, but everyone knows if it's on the internet it's legitimate. In fact, any day my new unicorn, Henry, is arriving with his two bales of regenerating hay and self-cleaning pooper scooper. I cleared out a closet for him. It's a very exciting time over here.

Anyway, I've found a super cheap bus (yes, by efficient I really meant "cheap") to transport me from Chinatown, New York to Providence, Rhode Island, fortunately not my last destination on that particular trip. I will meet a friend from there and travel on in relative luxury in her Ford Focus. I will tell her how to say "hello" and "flower" in Chinese, and read her her lucky numbers. I may even tell her a joke ("What did the cow say?" "Moo"), who knows. Really, taking a Chinatown bus will be nothing short of magical, so it'll all kind of be downhill after that. But I feel sure that finding this bus line is a little Christmas miracle. Though it will be after that day, perhaps I can rouse my fellow bus riders to a spirited, if not mangled, rendition of 'Jingle Bells.'

Um, scratch that. Better make it 'Oh Christmas Tree.'