Well I’m keeping up with the running in Van Hoa Park. Madame at the tea terrace still laughs at me when I come back sweating bullets. And she loves to wring out a hunk of my shirt and watch the sweat run. Then she sits me down at my usual table and towels me off in mother hen fashion, chuckling all the while, telling me I’m crazy. Today folks across the alley at the Ice Cream Hotel laughed at the scene, joking that they couldn’t tell if she were my mother or my wife. They decided it would be funnier if she were my wife, and the joke rippled down the alley. I hope they don’t start calling me Mr. Madame!

Well, as you know by now, folks here do like to pigeonhole you. They ask your age, your marital status, how many kids you have, what’s your sign, where did you get your hat. And once they’ve got you neatly in your hole you’re in that hole for good. Unless and until a voice of great authority, such as Madame Professor, tells them a greater truth. A few days ago I was doing my usual counter-clockwise laps around the park. I decided that was monotonous and switched directions, running clockwise for the rest of the run. At the end I sat on the usual park bench to catch my breath before repairing to Madame’s for my well earned suds. One of the park workers approached me, and just stood there regarding me, with a somewhat worried or confused look on his face. I figured he’d never seen a paleface up close all sweaty and pink. But then he spoke, in halting English. He told me his name, but I shall always call him Mr. Park. After the obligatory pleasantries Mr. Park paused, sucked his tobacco stained teeth and said, “I see you running many times in my park.”

You may have noticed that here in Vietnam anything with which a person is affiliated is “my.” The waiter says, “Welcome to my restaurant.” The dish washer says, “I wash my dishes.” The garbage man says, “I collect my garbage.” The cop says, “I direct my traffic." And beware, for when speaking English they often confuse the possessive pronouns. You might be introduced to a lady and be told that she is “your” wife. A lady may say that she is going to “my” room later, and then you find her at your door. My, oh my!

But on to Mr. Park’s report. He has been watching me. Perhaps he has been taking notes. Maybe I’ve somehow been doing something unauthorized and he is going to “fine” me. “Every day I see you,” he says, “and you run that way,” indicating counter-clockwise.  He waited for my response to his close observation. “Uh, yeah…,” say I.

He paused, as though looking for just the right words, and says in an almost solicitous manner, “But today you change. After you start.” Then he awaited enlightenment.  I said nothing.

“Something wrong in my park?” he asked.

“No, Sir,” I said, and I tried to explain that I had changed my steady course on a whim. More the fool I.

“Somebody make trouble for you?” He asked.

“No, no trouble.”

“Something in your way?”

“No, nothing, nothing in the way.”

“I work very hard to make the park good.”

“Yes, I’m sure you do.”

“But you don’t like to go that way.”

“I like to go that way.”

“Why you don’t go that way?”

“I go that way before.”

“But now you don’t go.”

“Yes, well, you see…”

I knew there was no explaining, rationally. I might as well try to tell him about Panama hats and cowboy hats. If only Madame Professor had been there to bail me out. I wondered what she might have said. Yes, yes indeed. What would Madame P. say? Well, she might tell him to mind his own business! But then I’m not a party member. I’m a foreigner, and possibly some kind of heretic. I’m from California. Ah ha!

“You know California?”

“Yes,” he says hesitantly. “I have cousin in California. Also Minnesota.”

“I am from California. And in California we do that.”

“Sure?”

“Number one sure.”

“Everybody?”

“Mostly. It’s a custom.” Custom is one thing people here can appreciate, even if they think it’s crazy. I got up, and I thanked him for all his hard work in making the park good. I congratulated him on a job well done. That kind of thing is important here, along with custom, and pigeonholing, and soothsaying, and clinking-and-drinking, and joking, and laughing, and loving. I left Mr. Park still a little befuddled, but with at least a tentative smile on his face, and went for my suds at Madame’s, who thinks I’m crazy, but loves me anyway.

And that's the news from somewhere in Saigon, where all of the beer is reasonably cold most of the time, all the parks are made good, and somebody will love you no matter how crazy you are.