I Live With a Batty Old Lady
September 12th, 2006 by MarkI like my landlady. However, there’s a very fine line that divides charmingly batty from batshit-insane, and she’s pushing it. Her off-handed comments about how dryers are unsanitary and how it’s better to leave your clothes out on a line until they dry are weird to me, but not that unusual for Taiwan. Her daily pieces of advice that she gives me are actually kind of sweet. What happened last night disturbs me.
Since I only have one bedroom (including a bathroom and balcony), I have to walk through an enormous living room every time I come home. I have to pass through there to get to the kitchen, too. Normally, my landlady’s hanging out on the sofa, watching TV. If I get home late, as I did last night, though, the living room is completely dark. In the interests of not being an insensitive jerk, I leave the light off and try to walk back to my room as quietly as I can in those cases.
Last night, I also had a bag full of various drinks I’d bought at 7-11 on the way home. Seeing that the lights were out, I quietly got out of my shoes, put on my slippers, and tip-toed my way towards the kitchen, staying near the wall as I went. I managed to keep my plastic 7-11 bag from crinkling as I slid past the piano. Then as I was stepping around the dining table, trying to make sure I didn’t trip across the threshold to the kitchen, there was a sudden screech behind me, “Xiaoma, you’re back! Do you have any gift prizes for me?”
“Buahaaaa!” I screamed. There was some sort of movement from the table behind me, I whipped around and saw my landlady sitting up from it. “What the heck are you doing sleeping on the dining room table?” I asked.
She looked at me like I was some silly little kid and laughed, “Hahaha. You get scared to easily. So, you went to 7-11, didn’t you? Didn’t you!!?”
“Yeah. Why are you sleeping on the table!!?”
“You have to give me all the promotional prizes you got at 7-11. You said you would, didn’t you? You said so yesterday.”
I had agreed to give her all those stupid Hello Kitty magnets and Doraemon things they give out at 7-11. “Here,” I said, “take them all.”
“Oohh, my friend’s grand-daughter will be happy now! Hee, hee, hee.”
“So, why are you sleeping on the dining room table!!? There’s a couch in here too, if you like this room, you know…”
“Humph,” she answered. “There’s nothing wrong with this table. It’s nice, big, and flat.” After that, I just didn’t know what to say. I cut the conversation short, tossed my drinks in the fridge and retreated to my room, where things are normal.
Related Post:New Place, Same Sweet Internet Connection
Related Post:Landlady Reloaded
Related Post:The Landlady Strikes Back
September 12th, 2006 at 12:21 am
like I said, I’m starting an odds line on how long this arrangement is going to last. In the meantime, we’ll leave the light on for ya.
September 12th, 2006 at 12:26 am
Ohh… you could have gotten a much better line if you’d opened betting before I wrote this post!
September 12th, 2006 at 12:57 am
hahaha, thats great!
September 12th, 2006 at 2:39 am
If she were a male roommate about your age, you would just laugh it off and think he had bad social skills. She just talks to you the same way she would talk to her friends. But sleeping on the table, hmmm…blame it on a bad back or something. Tell her she should take up tai chi or dancing with the people in the park.
September 12th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
But Karen, what guy my own age would insist on giving me daily pieces of advice, refuse to take no for an answer when I say I don’t need an umbrella, or constantly go on about how I’m “such a young man to be so far away from home” even though I’m pushing 30? No, no. These are definitely old lady traits.
September 13th, 2006 at 11:30 am
About her ‘dryers are unsanitary’ comment, my wife absolutely FLIPPED one time when she accompanied me to laundromat and saw me getting ready to wash my socks and underwear together. Her logic was: those go on your feet. In the washing machine they touch your underwear. Your underwear touches your thing. That goes you know where. So it’s basically like you’re putting your dirty feet you know where.
Sorry if that was crass; I tried to be as obtuse as possible… hehe \’-)
September 13th, 2006 at 11:32 pm
Hmm, Dan’s comment is nothing new to me. That’s the Taiwan logic for you. You can’t shake it, now matter how bright or Westernized she is. I don’t know how men are, since I don’t talk to Taiwan men about these things. Ho does one change that? Probably living in Canada or American. Old British people are weird about things just like old Taiwanse people are. But I don’t know how much of that has passed onto their kids. Ah, culture. I don’t know, Jeez.
September 14th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
Haha. I knew this would happen. I wonder what she’ll do next. This woman could be the making of your blog-stardom.
September 14th, 2006 at 9:21 pm
Sleeping on hard surfaces is extremely common outside the US. It’s you that’s weird.
September 15th, 2006 at 2:26 am
OnTones, I’ve spent four of my last six years sleeping on futons, and I agree that there’s nothing wrong with hard surfaces. Many Taiwanese people have told me they thought it was weird not to have a bed, though. So did a number of Guatemalans.
In any case, the weird thing about my landlord wasn’t the fact that she was sleeping on a hard surface. The weird thing is that she chose the dining room table; it’s that she scared the shit out of me by abruptly asking me for my 7-11 prizes while I was tip-toeing by at 2AM. I had no idea she’d be sleeping there.
Since you’ve made a point of saying how weird I am for thinking she was weird, could you maybe enlighten us as to where outside the US you’ve been living over the last several years, and what sorts of hard surfaces people in those areas usually sleep on? Have you lived anywhere where sleeping on dining room tables is the norm?
September 16th, 2006 at 11:59 am
LOL! That is some funny shit Mark!
I still like sleeping on tables! (and you know I do stuff like that.)
November 23rd, 2006 at 9:16 pm
[...] Oh, there’s been quite a bit to write about on the landlady front recently! If only I hadn’t been so busy this week, I’d have written earlier. For those of you who don’t know about the old Chinese lady who’s both my landlady and my flatmate, read I Live With a Batty Old Lady [...]
November 25th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
Assuming there was a good reason for her to be sprawled out on that table (I’d also suspect back trouble), the incoherence of the rest kind of follows. I’ve done and said some weird shit on being suddenly woke in strange places by foreigners bearing Hello Kitty toys.
I’m more concerned about your having slipped without protest into her Doraemon sect, offering up sacrifices from 7-11 in exchange for illusionary personal safety (”As long as I keep her supplied with toys….”). Sleep with one eye open and keep that door locked.