Five Times Three Equals … (It Ain’t 15)
They call Thailand the “land of smiles,” a slogan I never much liked. Nevertheless, I was determined to leave with one.
BANGKOK, Thailand
I don’t laugh enough these days. I still have giggly moments, sure, with the right people, but laughter is no longer the daily presence in my life that it used to be.
That can happen with age, I think. Things start feeling more serious and more contentious (and if you look out at the world, particularly as a journalist like me, they kind of are). It feels as if there’s more to lose, and you start to see perils in too many places. It’s very corrosive and it’s pernicious, too. It sneaks up on you, sliver by sliver, until eventually, a lot of inherent good humor can be squelched by incessantly encroaching thunderclouds.
It’s also reversible, I think. I tried to take a step in that direction tonight.
After nearly four wonderful, fascinating, challenging and exhausting years living and working in Bangkok, arguably the flagship city of Southeast Asia, I am leaving next week for other pastures. I decided I wanted to carry something away with me — something that would remind me not only of this place that has been part of my family’s life since the year “Rock Around the Clock” hit the charts, but of the good humor I wanted to make sure I didn’t lose as life edges inexorably forward.
Enter the number five.
One of the first things about Thailand that I remember from early childhood is the phrase “peals of laughter.” My mother used it when talking about the children she encountered while my parents and sisters lived in Bangkok for several years during the second half of the 1950s, well before I was born.
Everywhere my mother went in those days, she reported encounters with good-natured, active, laughing children. There were “peals of laughter” from her Thai housekeeper’s children, more “peals of laughter” from children she met down in Hua Hin, the beach town south of Bangkok where the king and queen summered. Children of academic colleagues, too, were prone to “peals of laughter.” To me, laughter — Thai laughter — always arrived in peals. (Never used the word since. Sorry, Mom.)
Today, at 93, she no longer really remembers her life in Bangkok. But when I moved here in 2014, I found she was right. All around me, children laughed in all kinds of wonderful ways.
I found out something else, too: When they grew into phone-toting, chat-obsessed teenagers and young adults, they started to laugh virtually as well.
And they did it in an unusual way. They simply typed “555.”
In Thai, the number five is pronounced “haa,” or “ha.” It stands to reason, then, that “555,” in a text message, has far more of an economy of thumb energy than does typing out all of “hahaha.” It’s half as long.
So sometime in the past decade or so, it became standard texting practice among Thais — and the foreigners who live among them — that if someone said something funny, a perfectly appropriate response would be simply “555” — effectively a uniquely Thai LOL.
We use it in the international community here in Bangkok all the time — a clear case of linguistic cultural appropriation for sure, albeit a harmless one. In short, all the cool kids say 555.
Last Saturday evening, I was sitting with my friend Darra in a Bangkok gin bar with the unlikely moniker “Teens of Thailand.” (And no, there’s nothing remotely untoward about it except the name.) We were talking about tattoos and laughter and 555s.
And it struck me: That’s what I wanted to leave here with — that Thai shorthand on my, well, hand. Not the Arabic numerals — 555 — but the Thai script itself.
All the tattoo parlors we knew were closed, which was probably a good thing, since I was already a few drinks in. So I made an appointment for tonight, a few hours after I finished my final day of work in Bangkok.
Common Ground Tattoo sits just off the Saphan Taksin stop of the BTS, on the edge of Chinatown near the Chao Phraya River, which winds past the royal palace and down through Bangkok.
You find the parlor’s entrance by poking your way through a back alley whose mouth is crowded with food carts. Tonight, for once, I actually wasn’t there to eat, though the pan-fried leek dumplings stationed at the alley’s entrance did their best to distract me from my needle-seeking mission.
Like many tattoo parlors, Common Ground is a strangely comforting agglomeration of homey and edgy. In the waiting room upstairs, chairs and couches that would be right at home in a 1970s suburban living room share space with old-time girlie magazines that would be right at home in the back of a 1970s suburban garage. The requisite royal portraits and small shrines are present, as are pieces of art that evoke the Siam of yesteryear. Also a plush Pink Panther who, from the look on his face, just can’t.
I have had a Facebook pre-discussion with the parlor about what I want, but the artist still seems a smidgen tentative.
“Hahaha?” he says. “Five five five, right?”
Then: “Where are you from?”
Sukhumvit 49, I say, being coy.
“But where are you FROM?”
America, I say, but I have lived here for nearly four years and I’m moving back next week.
“Will you come back to Thailand ever?”
I certainly hope so.
He says something I don’t quite catch, but I think it is this: “You want laughs on your hand.”
In fact, I do.
After he prints out a stencil and gets my approval, it takes barely 10 minutes start to finish. I am ushered into the back and placed on a bed. Across the room, another artist is working on a far more elaborate tattoo on an already well-adorned arm. In short order, the front pad of my left hand, beneath the thumb knuckle, is shaved, rubbed with alcohol gel, stenciled and engraved. The electric needle vibrates. My bones rattle. I grit my teeth, bite my lower lip. I remain completely still except for my right arm, which deploys an iPhone quietly to capture the moment. Soon the artist smiles at me.
“Done,” he says.
“I now have laughs on my hand,” I say to him. He smiles again.
I look at it. The numbers are quite beautiful. If you don’t know they’re Thai, they could just be a curvy design. Maybe even a trio of ampersands.
It occurs to me: I may have ruled out ever working at Walt Disney World. I guess I can live with that, even though a “hahaha” tattoo seems appropriate for the “happiest place on Earth.” And if I ever try to get a job in corporate? Well, a nice wide Band-Aid, deployed strategically, will get me through the interview process.
Now, whenever I look at my left hand, I will be reminded to laugh. That’s good, because I think my left brain and my right brain are forever battling it out, and the more methodical left brain needs to chill the fuck out already, so perhaps the left hand can help.
What time is it, you say? Let me look. Oh! There’s the ol’ Thai 555. Things aren’t so bad after all.
Try it. 555. 555. 555. Makes you feel better already, doesn’t it?
Yeah, I don’t laugh enough these days. That can happen with age, I think. I told you that already, though.
But I’m 49, pushing 50 by the spring, and I’m sure gonna try to laugh more. And now Thailand —my home for the past four years — Thailand’s gonna help me do that, even though I’m not going to be here anymore.
I came to the so-called land of smiles to live for a while. Next week, I’ll leave with a literal peal of laughter on my hand and, I hope, more giggly moments ahead.
There. I finally used “peal.” The mom that my Thailand-loving mom used to be would probably approve. On any number of levels. She might even like the tattoo, 555.
Related stories by me:
Ted Anthony, a Pittsburgher living in Thailand (for five more days), is a Baby Boomer by generation and a Gen-Xer by age. He has been dissecting and musing about American culture since Guns N’ Roses was on the charts and “Rain Man” was in the theaters. He is the author of Chasing the Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song. He tweets here, Instagrams here and collects various fragmentary images and thoughts on Tumblr here.
©2017 |Ted Anthony
