Gasoline (the Japanese can't pronounce the name Catherine very well) - the head of the Tochigi-ken AETs (Assistant English Teachers) - had sent me something in the mail - and with breathless anticipation brought about by the fact that I had the major hots for this beautiful woman, I raced back up the stairs to my apartment so that I could open it in private.
I'm not sure what I really expected it to be, but I could swear I smelled her perfume on the envelope, as I carefully tore it open and pulled out two sheets of paper - one in the blond bombshell's own handwriting - a treasure!
To reiterate, I may have been in lust with nearly all of the female AETs in JET, but a few, like Gasoline and Kristine out in Shiga-ken, and Ashley whom I was still with caused the blood flow to get all mixed up.
Not that it mattered, neither Gasoline or Kristine would ever sleep with me. Although, Kristine did recently tell me that if I hadn't been so screwed up over Ashley she would have slept with me. Why am I only hearing about stuff like this now?
Anyhow, I read Gasoline's 'letter'... although hand-written, it was obvious she had sent me a chain letter.
I am a fairly superstitious person, and I had been getting my fair share of good luck while here in Japan (except for finding out about Kristine 20 years too late!), but for some reason, I decided that rather than fulfill the terms of the chain letter (send copies to five of your friends - Gasoline considers me a friend??!! Kewl), I figured I would instead share the wealth and allow someone else to have a bit of my good luck. Y'see, I've always believed that there is only a certain amount of good luck in the world, and if one person has too much good luck, someone else could have bad luck. Okay... I sort of believe it. Sorta.
Now, if I had paid attention and done as Gasoline had asked, within four days I would have received good luck (or in my case, more good luck). The people on the "having forwarded the chain letter" list included politicians like US President Ronald Reagan and his US Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.
But I didn't forward the chain letter. More the fool am I.
Four days after, I was on my way to my girlfriend's house (yes, at this point in time I am still going out with Ashley) to travel to the Renewer's Conference. On the way, I was almost hit by a car (it would have been my third), dropped my luggage containing the video camera I had borrowed from a teacher, and forgot most of the ingredients for a sandwich I was going to make for the six-hour trip.
However, since I was not hit, did not damage the camera, and had a decent enough sandwich anyway, I didn't think much about the curse of the chain letter.
Then it happened. Almost as soon as I got on the shinkansen (bullet train), I became moody and depressed. During the conference, after a seminar that gave us a psychological exam, I was classified as being a tad suicidal. Hmmmm.
After the conference finished, my girlfriend dumped me (again)... no wait, I dumped her! Yeah, that's right. I dumped her. Loser. Of course it still doesn't explain why I began having difficulty in sleeping, staying awake and getting maybe 14 hours sleep over a two-week period.
I think I knew during the conference that the break-up was coming... oh well, at least the shackles were off... but hell, if Ashley had only told me BEFORE the conference, Kristine and I could have... oh yeah... that was part of the plan, I'm sure.
Back home, lucky old me got to visit my school from hell: Kaneda Kita Junior High School. I hate this place. The students here all must be part of the Hitler Youth. I watched with heavily veined eyes as they goose-stepped past me into the concentration camp (classroom). I'm writing metaphorically.
Since there was a blood-letting festival (kendo - Japanese bamboo sword dueling) going on at the school this week, and the English teacher just so happened to be the kendo coach, I was asked if I wouldn't mind teaching a few classes by myself. Delirious from self abuse and insomnia, I said: "Unh."
The next thing I knew, I was thrust into a classroom where a student walked up to me, dropped his trousers and wanted to compare penis sizes with me.*
I can't help but wonder if any of this could have been avoided if I'd only sent out five copies of that darn chain letter. But where in the heck was I to find five friends I hated, anyways?
Somewhere looking through the garbage,
Andrew Joseph
Today's title is brought to us by the awesome Aretha Franklin - LISTEN
*PS: Mine was bigger. I suppose luck had nothing to do with it.
PPS - the image above is of a block of special stamps issued on the Year of the Dragon in 1964... my birth year. If I'm writing about being born under a bad sign (bad luck), what better image than stamps from my birth year - as one needs stamps to mail a chain letter. At least you did back in 1991. Notice that it was only 5 yen to post a letter back then - that's like $0.00058 Canadian.
