Today I was able to venture out on my own and see what kind of trouble I could get in to. I know how to get to the beach, my cousins restaurant, and to my Aunt and Uncle’s house, but that’s about the extent of it.
So I drove down to the beach where I watched the tide come in and the seagulls fast asleep top the rippled water. The tide amazes me. Early yesterday evening, I was walking among the big rocks that seemed a mile away from shore, only to find today that my footprints have been washed away and there was no trace I was ever there, as everything was under water.
This is such an amazing area. Ogunquit is a little touristy town, set on the beach, that crawls with visitors in the spring and summer, and in the winter is dried up and just the natives occupy the streets. Little shops, and privately owned restaurants and café’s sit close together and all within view of the beach. It’s Mayberry gone coastal. Everyone knows each other… the plow guy doubles as a restaurant owner, and a local policeman is dating your waiter.
Today I landed in a Nail salon. My nail technician was the Vietnamese owner, named Kyle. Don’t ask. Kyle speaks English well enough to understand, but he is so soft spoken its hard to hear at times. While sitting there as he filled, filed, cut, and painted my nails, he told me stories of his homeland. He moved here when he was 12, so he remembers enough of Vietnam to make a comparison. I must warn you, I tend to think outside of the box but I have never been out of the country. Once my Uncle Bill threatened to take me to Mexico as we were 3 miles from the border, but he has yet to make good on that threat. So sitting with Kyle was the closest I can come to travel. Or experiencing different point of view, or way of life.
“So did you like it there?” I asked. Don’t let my interviewing skills impress you too much.
“It’s completely different than here,” he said, looking up from working on my ring finger. “In Vietnam, you don’t work, because you don’t have to work.”
“Well how do you pay your bills?” I asked. Naive. I know. But imagining a world without my internet connection, my latte’ once in a while, or shopping for clothes is beyond my comprehension.
“We don’t have any bills,” He said. Buy me a one-way. Now. “We grow our food, and we sell it, or trade it for meat. If we want a house, we build a house, and we own it.” He smiled.
“It’s like, if you are poor, you are really poor. If you are rich, you are really rich. If you buy a Toyota that cost 30 thousand here, its like 90 thousand there… and the rich go in, and pay with cash. If you are born into a rich family, you know you will always be rich. But if you are born into a poor family… then you know you will always be poor.”
I nodded.
“And divorce is so easy. There, you don’t get divorced. The kids suffer, and nobody thinks about them here,” He said. “Too, too easy to get divorced. Like, if I were to marry you, you would come into more of my family than I in yours. We don’t get divorced.”
“Well what if you were caught beating your wife? The wife couldn’t get a divorce then?” I ask, trying to think of a scenario where a divorce is required in my opinion.
“One time, my uncle beat his wife. My other uncle, his brother, beat him up for it,” Kyle said, very matter-of-factly. “The husband would get in trouble for beating his wife. It would be the duty of the husbands family to take care of it.”
Soon my nails were done, and dried… and he offered one last bit of insight.
“Everybody wants more here. We are never happy. We always want something else. Like, in Vietnam, I loved going to get the mail. Here, I hate getting it,” Kyle said. I nodded in agreement.
“It’s not all the stuff that makes you happy. It’s the small things. The little things.”
I walked out of the nail salon happy with what I thought would just be the run of the mill drive through nail job. I don’t think I will ever forget Kyle, the guy who did my nails in the Ogunquit area.
The best part?
Kyle is 28. A business owner. From a poor family.
Possibilities are endless.
