Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Ya-ta Boy]

Over the years many posters have noted that they enjoy reading Bill Bryson�s travel books. Last night in Kyobo I discovered he�d written (2006) a memoir and started reading it. As expected, it�s a real hoot. It�s filled with stories like this:

Under the sink, my mother kept an enormous collection of jars, including one known as the toity jar. �Toity� in our house was the term for a pee, and throughout my early years the toity jar was called into service whenever a need to leave the house inconveniently coincided with a sudden need by someone�and when I say �someone,� I mean of course the youngest child: me�to pee.

�Oh, you�ll have to go in the toity jar then,� my mother would say with just a hint of exasperation and a worried glance at the kitchen clock. It took me a long time to realize that the toity jar was not always�or even often�the same jar twice. Insofar as I thought about it at all, I suppose I guessed that the toity jar was routinely discarded and replaced with a fresh jar�we had hundreds after all.

So you may imagine my consternation, succeeded by varying degrees of dismay, when I went to the fridge one evening for a second helping of halved peaches and realized that we were all eating from a jar that had, only days before, held my urine. I recognized the jar at once because it had a Z-shaped strip of label adhering to it that uncannily recalled the mark of Zorro�a fact that I had cheerfully remarked upon as I had filled the jar with my precious bodily nectars, not that anyone had listened of course. Now here it was holding our dessert peaches. I couldn�t have been more surprised if I had just been handed a packet of photos showing my mother in flagrante with, let�s say, the guys at the gas station.

�Mom,� I said coming to the dining-room doorway and holding up my find, �this is the toity jar.�

�No, honey,� she replied smoothly without looking up. �The toity jar�s a special jar.�

�What�s the toity jar?� asked my father with an amused air, spooning peach into his mouth.

�It�s a jar I toity in,� I explained. �And this is it.�

�Billy toities in a jar?� said my father, with very slight difficulty, as he was no longer eating the peach half he had just taken in, but resting it on his tongue pending receipt of further information concerning its recent history.

�Just occasionally,� my mother said.

My father�s mystification was now nearly total, but his mouth was so full of unswallowed peach juice that he could not meaningfully speak. He asked, I believe, why I didn�t go upstairs to the bathroom like a normal person. It was a fair question to ask in the circumstances.

�Well, sometimes we�re in a hurry,� my mother went on, a touch uncomfortably. �So I keep a jar under the sink�a special jar.�

I reappeared from the fridge, cradling more jars�as many as I could carry. �I�m pretty sure I�ve used all these, too,� I announced.

�That can�t be right,� my mother said, but there was a kind of question mark hanging off the edge of it. Then she added, perhaps a touch self-destructively: �Anyway, I always rinse all jars thoroughly before reuse.�

My father rose and walked to the kitchen, inclined over the waste bin, and allowed the peach half to fall into it, along with about half a liter of goo. �Perhaps a toity jar�s not such a good idea,� he suggested.

So that was the end of the toity jar, though it worked out for the best, as these things so often do. After that, all my mother had to do was mention that she had something good in a jar in the fridge and my father would get a sudden urge to take us to Bishop�s, a cafeteria downtown, which was the best possible outcome, for Bishop�s was the finest restaurant that ever existed.

From �The Life and Times of the Thunderbold Kid� pp. 18-19

[Stevie_B]

Good stuff. Bill Bryson's a great writer and a nice chap too.

I would also like to point out that I liked his travel books before anyone else had even heard of him. So there.

[bluelake]

I first read Bryson's book, The Mother Tongue, many years ago. It was a great read. I only had a problem with one thing he mentioned (about the origin of the name "Korea") and I wrote him through his publisher. He wrote me back a personal letter (which I still have) and said many people had written him on that same item.

[Ya-ta Boy]

One of the blurbs says: "Travel writing's reigning wit has produced another book in which the spirit of Mark Twain lives on."

I was especially reminded of that quote when I came across the story I posted. It is an apt description.