A year before I got my driver’s license this summer holiday, I was attending a normal Subject-2 Practice Course with my friend, Frost. I would just call him my “younger brother” because he WAS someone to me a younger brother since I don’t really have a brother biologically.
It was a fucking hot afternoon of a day, and there were some fifteen trainees sharing one same car. Our tutor was in an air-conditioned room taking a nap since he had taught everything we needed to know about parking a car right and not crossing the lines or running into a wall. Unlike some shameless guys, my brother and I would do the practice six times respectively, which is the rule, which was the fair thing.
So then after my showing off how accurate and fast I could be to park the car, it was my little brother’s turn. He was quite slow as a beginner, so I took a seat in the co-driver’s side, directing him how he should control the clutch and the brake. He was surely slow, but I believed there were some other guys much slower than what he was. Then at his fifth time of parking the car, a GUY walked toward our car, stopped, knocking the window heavily, and asked: “What are you doing there? Everybody is waiting for you two guys.” A ferocious look on his face, as if he were the Boss of the World and he knew every single rule here and we were the ones who violated the norms.
Then he went back to the seat where he was waiting, cursing us while we continued.
We were quite angry while we were finishing the last two times. And we decided to have a talk with that ridiculous fella, with a buzz cut, in a pink T-shirt, like everybody else you could possibly dislike in the universe. In Chinese, you could call him a “Social Man”, which does not mean that he was really social, but “social” with quotation marks, which literally means “Every Street Boy that Looks Cool and Is Going to Knock Someone Out”.
We slammed the doors of the car while we got off. And we walked to him, sat down in a row of chairs that were to his right side, and I asked: “WHERE are you from?” And “Where are YOU from?” Back he asked. It was at that moment I knew: I was asking a wrong question. So the atmosphere became a little embarrassing, and I looked awkward. But it doesn’t matter so much since we were here to talk about his impoliteness toward us.
So I continued: “My brother was doing his practice six times, which is not against the rule, and everyone was doing it six times before us. So what is the problem if he does what he has the right to do?”
Another man went into the car, starting his six-time practice.
“Can’t you see everybody is waiting outside in the hot air? Can you even feel how hot it is? Everybody is waiting, but how could you guys sit in the car for so long, not caring about other’s feelings at all?” To me he said.
Immediately I understood that this is a man of no reasonability. I knew for sure that it was of no benefit to keep talking to him, because he refuses to listen to what you say—he only cares about what he feels. It was not talking; it was simply speaking.
However, my brother and I would not take this for an end, since we were not treated fairly. My little brother tried to explain again that what we were doing was absolutely not a problem at all, for that all we were doing was to Do As Romans Do.
“Why would you think that you are favored to take up other’s time? How could you think you are superior to other people?” He did not take this, neither.
So I tried to turn other trainees into judges, some of them more than 40 years old, whom you would lovingly call Aunts and Uncles, from the little town where I was from. I asked them to tell whether what we did was right or not, or which side of the two sides is not right. And all you’d got from these bitches and sons of bitches, who would do their practice eight or nine times while we pretended not to have seen it, was AMBIGUITY.
Now at last I knew, after five minutes of not getting a rational voice or a helpful judgement, it’s just nonsense and a waste of time to continue.
So I said, “Eat shit”, which was a “pet phrase” of us two at that time.
I was not adding a subject while saying it, since it does not need a subject when we say it, and I was not referring to anyone, not to him at least. Maybe I was referring to my god-damned, mother-fucking destiny who presented me a bad day.
And yes for sure, he would take it as asking him to eat shit.
If you could remember that he was a “Social Man”.
So he was put into extreme discomfort. In a second, he sprang to his feet, smashing over my head with his brand-new golden Apple. It went bent, of an angle about 15 degrees. My head was fine, but I was astonished: How could a man attack another man with a phone so publicly and how hard my head was. No movement did continue, and I think that he was also astonished at “how could I destroy my new iPhone on another man’s head and how fucking soft an iPhone is.”
Time, atmosphere, and everyone here had been frozen for one second or two.
My little brother sprang up like the Social Man did, and tried pushing him back, before he himself was stopped by someone.
Aunts and Uncles dragged the Social Man back while we were both in our astonishment, not taking a second move.
Then both sides were brought under control till everyone calmed down.
Uncles said: “Now here comes more and more of us, we might as well change the times we practice into FOUR, instead of SIX, so that everyone could have more time to practice.” And Aunts agreed. The “NOW” is the most ambiguous issue they brought out. I asked myself: Is your “NOW” before my little brother’s six-times practice or after it? You are talking as if it were before everything happened. You are talking as if it were our fault. And who even taught you math?
“Son of bitch.” I thought.
Minutes later, Social Man went to another side of the road, calling someone, calling him “Big Brother”. I knew it must be Big Brother, or whom would it be? Every Social Man is calling his Big Brother, as I had seen in the last twenty years, from my primary school years to the end of Senior High. My little brother and I sat there, talking about how fucking damned the day was, observing as he made his call.
A phone call with an Apple bent.
I knew it would be annihilating if the Big Brother comes to be one same irrational person like he was. I think Frost shared the same feeling, but none of us talked about it. We just observed and waited.
The Big Brother arrived in half an hour, and began inquiring of him about the situation as we hopped into the car again. So now there’s only four times for each person. And “Fuck it”, we said.
When we got off, they were standing at another end of the road, smoking. Then finally they walked to us. My brother was like “we are fucking finished.” The cool thing is, my head was still performing, functioning well, and I knew this Big Brother could be better than the Social Man. Most importantly, I knew that we were mostly right and I could take this advantage. Thus I asked my brother to let me do the talking.
I explained to him about what had happened before he came, but he would not like to focus on What Happened at First. What he cared about was that I asked his man to eat shit. So I made it clear to him what it is to “Eat Shit”, and explained What Happened at First again. Then I told him that I tried to argue with his man only to protect my younger brother’s right,because he was doing nothing wrong.
There should not be a third explaining since he had surely understood what I wanted to express. I shall not give a slap in his face although I was right, because he was the Big Brother, and my Little Brother and I both looked very Little in front of him who had the weight and muscle like a fat version of Cristiano Ronaldo.
I should save his face. I have to save his face.
“I am also trying to protect my younger brother. Are we good?” he asked.
“We are good. Sure. No problem at all. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have talked to him like that. I'm sorry”
Then he asked his man to apologize to me. So he did, with an impatient look on his face.
So things turned out fine. They talked with each other for some ten minutes over the road, and Big Brother went away in his BMW.
As we waited for our turn, Social Man and we were standing under a same roof. Trying a gentle voice I asked: “What type is it?”
“6s.”
“Must be very expensive. What are you going to do with it?”
“I’ll go to an Apple Store to see if I could have it replaced.” His sharpness fading.
We all got in the car two more times, me and my little brother, the Social Man, Aunts and Uncles, respectively. The Social Man was not doing well, crossing the line at every turn, putting the car to a wrong angle, stalling the engine several times. I bet it was the hot air that got him so Fast and Furious.
We went on the bus back home as he took his last time of practice. I was feeling quite joyful, chuckling inside. I might be one of the very few people in the world who’d bent an iPhone 6s with his head(hopefully there'd be no her). Anyway, 6s is really soft, isn’t it?
Arriving, we decided not to tell anything to my parents. We would not like to talk about it. It was a shame that we did not hit back with our phones, because we were lacking courage, which is the true reason we did not fight. Therefore, instead of telling my parents and get scolded for putting ourselves into a vulnerable situation, we did many pushups.
Sometimes we put ourselves into vulnerable situations because we ourselves ARE vulnerable. The Social Man was on us because he could and could only be on us. Should we have the build of his Big Brother, he would not come and knock the window in the first place.
We were the fish on a chopping board, waiting to be hit on the head, die and get chopped into pieces. The butcher doesn’t care about whether himself is rational or not, he’s holding the knife and you are not.
Days later, we encountered Social Man in the driving school again, his phone straightened. I asked him of what he did do.
He exchanged the curved one for a new one with 2800 yuan.

Aug 2017
Thiago Chang