Mr. Wongs Wonderous World Of Words
Why I write
For as long as I can remember, and probably a little before that, I have loved stories. I had the good fortune of a grandmother who surrounded us with them, both real and fictional; I am eternally grateful to her for a great many things, her stories included.
This is not about stories, though. After all, most people tend to end up surrounding themselves with stories in one way or another, from thought-provoking literature to reality TV, informative journalism to BuzzFeed listicles, powerful memoirs to Insta and all variations in between. Stories are the foundations of our lives, a truly marvellous and curious thing indeed, but that is not what this is about.
No, this is about words. Stories are why I read, but words? Words are why I write…seeing as how you are reading, however, I shall make it a story about words, so that we may both be satisfied.
In early 90’s Australia, there was a peculiar quirk where every suburb seemed to have at least one lonely Chinese take-away restaurant tucked away in some location that never quite made sense.
In my suburb, that restaurant was Mr. Wongs. A building that seemed to sigh at its owner's stubborn refusal to let it be completely forgotten or repurposed. I assume that somewhere there are people who could describe what the exterior was supposed to look like, but by the time we settled into the house across the road, it was a crumbling façade of faded paint and cracked concrete. A beaded curtain hung in the door acting as the service bell any time someone ventured inside, no matter how small in stature nor how carefully they may have tried to sneak their way in, every customer arrived with a clutter of beads to disrupt and disturb the lone elderly man forever folding dumplings just barely out of sight in the kitchen.
My seven-year-old self spent a lot of time at Mr. Wongs. Not so much for the food, but rather as a habit of circumstance given my parent's propensity for fighting or forgetting to make sure that someone was home to open the door after school. We didn’t really speak a lot, but every time I tried to sneak in and he would peer out from the kitchen to greet me with a grunt and a nod before returning to his dumplings as I settled in at the lone table in the corner with my homework or books or pencils. Sometimes he would come out with a fortune cookie or provide a bowl of prawn crackers as a token of his welcome, but for the most part we never really spoke and simply settled into the routine of being two mismatched souls, generations apart and somehow brought together in a space that time seemed to have forgotten.
We went on like this for about three years. It was, of course, a group of high school boys that came crashing through the beads one day in cacophonous chatter to signal a new chapter.
Now, in hindsight, I understand that the most likely reason the restaurant always seemed to be empty is because I found myself there between the hours of school ending and adults returning from work or in the late evening hours when enough time together had tested my parent's tolerances, but that was beyond the reasoning of my childish brain and so a whole group of people suddenly arriving piqued my curiosity, to say the least.
Their chatter and laughter ricocheted around the room, seemingly oblivious to the weird quiet kid up the back, or perhaps they were simply teen boys with no care what a ten-year-old girl was doing, which would be a healthy and reasonable stance, but again, hindsight has helped recolour this time period rather tremendously with fresh perspective.
Anyway, back to the story.
Passing around the menu their voices turned to silent sniggers, elbowing each other and pointing at something or other with barely contained laughter. Mr. Wong simply stood patiently behind the counter, smiling at them and waiting for the order;
“I think we all want the vegetarian spring rolls”
There was something about the way they said it that seemed off, yet it lead to fits of roaring belly laughs amongst the group, falling about and repeating it to one another as Mr. Wong gave his usual smile and nod before disappearing into the kitchen again.
Once they had left and we had once again allowed the silence to settle around us I found myself unable to shake the curiosity. What was so funny about spring rolls anyway? I slid from my bench as quietly as I could, tip-toeing across the distance to the counter as though I were up to some great mischief rather than merely attempting to read a menu, suddenly, inexplicably fearful of getting caught.
Clearly, I missed my calling as a ninja because I made it to the counter, managing to snatch the menu down and scurry back to the safety of my corner to study it. Almost instantly I saw it, the typo that had prompted such laughter and the strange pronunciation of the order.
74. Vagitarian spring roll
Vagitarian did seem like a rather unfortunate error, and in that moment I felt it my duty to Mr. Wong and his fine establishment to inform him. Mustering up all my courage I picked up the menu and made my way towards the kitchen, pausing nervously at the invisible line that separated the customer side and the service side, the plastic laminate edges of the menu digging into my palms as I contemplated my options.
Do I dare invade the dumpling meditation space? Do I call out? Will he be mad at me for correcting him? Maybe I should just leave it, but I also didn’t want the closest person I had to a friend to be laughed at and mocked.
“Can I help you?”
Jumping nervously, startled by his sudden appearance. Studying the beads as though they were somehow to blame for him being alerted to my plans rather than my awkward hovering.
“Um, Mr. Wong, there’s…uh…there’s a mistake on the menu. That’s why those boys were being so weird”
Of all the scenarios I had played out in my head, I had not expected laughter from him. Least of all the type of laughter to fill the room and ricochet from the walls as the boys had done earlier. As he pulled himself together, bending down to take the menu from me and return it to its rightful place on the counter he shook his head at me;
“Let me tell you, those boys will go to school tomorrow and tell their friends, their friends will come in and buy more spring rolls. Those friends will tell others, they will also buy spring rolls. They might tell their parents, their parents will think it must be ‘authentic Chinese’ they will come, they will tell their friends. All because I changed one letter.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded, as though some great mystery of the universe had been revealed;
“You spelt it wrong on purpose?”
“Yes, why not?”
Elated I ran back to my corner, tearing a scrap of paper from my notebook and scribbling furiously to return with a note that read ‘Thank you Mr. Wonj’. Quite proud of myself, my efforts elicited a bemused smile, yet not the laughter I had been hoping for.
“Not like that. You have to know why it’s funny. You must learn the foundation, understand how words work before you change them. Now go on, go study your books, read everything, every word, learn them all and how they work — then you can have fun with them”.
And so I did.
I studied the dictionary as though it were a bible.
Allured by alliteration my tongue tripped and tumbled through the toughest of tongue twisters. I read books, newspapers, magazines, street signs, pamphlets, ticket stubs, posters, advertisements and classifieds.
Perhaps most worryingly to those around me, I fell in love with obituaries. They danced the line between fact and embellishment, they taught me euphemisms and the art of dark humour. The best ones managed to craft words in such a way they seemed to carry the tone and character of the person they intended to pay homage to.
I became a collector of words and set about practising how to wield them. Pages upon pages of words tasked with making my daydreams tangible, stored secrets and knowledge and jokes and puns.
Oh, how I loved puns.
I wrote even though I was left-handed and was forever smudging them, smearing their forms into unintelligible blots. Turning paragraphs into puzzles I would later go back, erase and find yet more words to fill in.
I wrote all the words that had been locked up inside of me, too shy and scared to release them into the world by voice, I set about capturing on page. I sent onomatopoeic words scratching, plonking, slithering and sliding, crashing into their cantankerous counterparts in the adjective realms. I found words I had no story for and so I wrote stories to give a home for these strange sentences and pleasing paraphrases I had concocted.
Within a few months, I’d written a short story my teacher made me read in front of the entire school assembly, within a year I wrote another that was sent off for a young writers award, when I won, Mr. Wong closed his restaurant to attend.
I started telling people I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.
Three years after that day with the boys in the restaurant, I ran away from home. Six months after that I stopped going to school and never returned.
I still loved words, I loved playing with them and using them in surprising ways but over time I made less and less time for them. They were pulled out as a party trick to write parody songs that made my friends laugh or write cover letters that opened doors I had no right walking through or for speeches at people's weddings. My greatest works are funding tenders and systems manuals. I was okay with that. I had built myself a pretty good life for an ex-street rat and have a great many blessings.
There is every chance I would have continued on that way, too, had it not been for a colleague leaving me a fortune cookie on my desk for the Lunar New Year this year.
From my corner office that shiny red wrapper took me right back to the corner table in an old, run-down Chinese Restaurant with an old man and a young girl taking three years of silence before connecting through the power of words.
So here I am, once again feeling as though starting from scratch as I return to attempting to master the power of words and wield them in a way that others may enjoy, connect to or perhaps even gain some lesson they may take with them.
I love words, and so I write them.
