Page 46 - MN

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remember the names of the people around me. I had to take a cold shower and a nap to get back to normal.
The good news is I never got angry at my caddy. Over here, some golfers treat the caddies badly and I have walked off the course rather than play with them.
So this morning was another great day on the course. Then off to Danisa's for another traditional Thai breakfast. Joe had a pulled-pork and jalapino sandwich and I had a falafel wrap. I should point out that I love Thai food and eat it all the time.
After breakfast I took a short nap and went for a haircut. I picked a salon at random and the lady was wearing jeans shorts and a tee-shirt, showing some tattoos. A spider web on her elbow, a spider on her forearm, a pyramid of Thai letters on the back of her neck which looked like a Buddhist thing, and she seemed nice. I always have the feeling barbers and stylists aren't that enthused about talking, especially if they're Thai and I'm not. But that might be me projecting. If I were a stylist, I'd want to concentrate on cutting hair, not on carrying on a conversation screwed up by a language barrier.
To set her mind at ease I pulled out my cell phone and read a book while she worked. It was peaceful, except for the book, which featured a pipe bomb, three deaths, a fight under water, and an escape. Yes, I do read mysteries. The haircut went well but there was no shampoo before or after. This is unusual in Thailand and I have come to enjoy the shampoos. Usually they're done by an apprentice stylist and are more like a head massage. This bare bones haircut cost 120 baht-- four dollars. I love Thailand. When I got home my wife’s mom thought the haircut looked stupid. The kids agreed. Oh well, it’ll grow out.
As I said earlier, my first musical instrument was a ukulele and I do not know where it came from. No, wait, at first I took piano lessons. Both mom and dad could play classical piano and my dad could play some rag time. So they got me a teacher and I hated the lessons. They saw the writing on the wall and let me quit. I must've been in grade school when I got the ukulele and I dreamed of being a big star. We lived in Michigan and we used to take vacations in Southhampton, Ontario. There was a resort there, and I think we went there two or three summers in a row. This time I had the ukulele and I would sit in the corner playing it, hoping someone would ask me to play and I'd be the life of the party.
Nothing happened until one night there were a lot of people in one of the dining rooms and someone wondered what they should do. My sister, Nancy, piped up, "Mike can play the ukulele!"
So I picked up my instrument, played brilliantly, a talent scout happened to be there and I was signed to a huge contract with Columbia records. Wrong.