The Chinese children watched the funny fat American in the ridiculous sport coat try to blow up the balloons.H e was a tourist in his late 60s, wearing a gray floppy hat. His face was a fleshy sagging caricature of itself, accented by an unkempt bushy salt-and-pepper mustache intended to disguise the steady loss of masculinity from his features.
Someone back home had told him that Chinese children love balloons. But what really caught the attention of the children was the exuberant vaudeville of this short-winded man in the funny clothing who was having a terribly difficult time inflating the balloons which were too small and thin for such an amateur. Each balloon he attempted to inflate flew from his lips into the air with the sound of a small fart, prompting laughter and applause from the children gathered around him.
My father, a man who once made deals with some of the most influential businessmen in America, had successfully transformed himself into an amusing street monkey.
Later that day he would show a group of Chinese university students how to peel an orange.
~ Story and artwork by Russ Allison Loar
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