CHAPTER 1: THE MAGIC OF MAGIC WORDS!

“Mother, please remove your fat behind from my favorite chair. Thank you very much!” I was giving my younger son a much needed lesson on courtesy and how magic words could be used to get a positive response to a specific request. And the positive response came immediately – she was out of the chair in no time! The magic words worked! She, the wife’s mother, my mother-in-law, my nemesis the Mighty Mouth, aka MM,  removed her fat behind from my favorite chair in two seconds flat! How else could her left hook land on its target?

 I picked myself up, endured the pain, ignored the indignity and turned to my son to reinforce a lesson learnt “You see, son? The magic words worked, right? Now tell me, which were the magic words I used?” And without hesitation he shouted “Fat behind – Ah Ma jumped out of your favorite chair as soon as you said the magic words and whacked you in your eye!”  I didn’t have any energy left in me to correct him. Besides, at that point of time I heard Mighty Mouth barking in her distinctive pitch of a canine specie of the female variety “EH! YOUR CCB IS HERE! YOU HEAR ME? YOU HEAR ME OR NOT!!! 

 And that was when I woke up,  found myself on the floor of my bedroom and realized it was all a dream. Or  maybe I should call it a nightmare. Any dream featuring Mighty Mouth turns into a nightmare! Picking myself up,  I caught a glimpse of my black eye in the mirror. Only that woman is capable of inflicting real injuries in my dreams.  Or nightmares.....

So it all started on that fateful Saturday afternoon which is usually well spent on my favorite pastime – napping.  And it would have been the usual uneventful Saturday if not for that  rude awakening.  I was still trying to figure out a way to hide my black eye when she started barking again “DID YOU HEAR ME OR NOT? YOUR CCB IS HERE!” 

 “I heard you, idiot! I heard you loud and clear!” I  screamed back, “and the whole neighborhood heard you too!” Okay, I didn’t scream back. If there is anything my good upbringing has taught me well, it was that two wrongs do not make a right. And if there is anything my life as her son-in-law has taught me well,  it was that where she is concerned,  two wrongs could  end up with a left hook to the right eye!  No, I was not about to start a fight with her, not with CCB around to witness her pummeling me into submission. He will report back to  his wife and his mother-in-law which means virtually the whole of Ang Mo Kio will hear of my debacle in a jiffy.  Besides, I  was already nursing one black eye and have neither the energy nor the inclination to nurse the other.

Now, I must introduce you to CCB, full name Cheong Chee Beng. He also goes by the fanciful name of Dandy. But I think Danielle suits him better. No, he’s not effeminate. He’s just scared stiff of his female (but of course) better half.

I have known him since secondary school. For two full years, we had no contact – two years of respite. And then out of the blue, he reappeared, two floors down, same unit number, in the very same block. Some call it fate. I  don’t know what to call it.  He is known to all and sundry as CB the Dandy, but his wife, however, calls him “Chee Beng”. And when he makes her angry, which happens every time he opens his mouth, the entire neighborhood will hear her screaming  “CHEONG CHEE BENG!”  He should thank his lucky stars his surname is not “Chow”.

Anyway, I took the cue from  her,   calling  him “CCB” whenever he makes me angry. Like right now! My dear mother-in-law reads me like a book and knows I will surely be annoyed by this untimely intrusion into my Saturday afternoon nap.

I dragged myself out of my room, determined not to allow either of them to spoil whatever was left of my Saturday. And there was CCB the Danielle, grinning like a jackass. So I grinned back like another jackass. Just to irk my MM. And so, to irk her further, I greeted CCB the Danielle, now turned CB the Dandy, with an exuberant “Hello, my friend, so kind of you to drop by!”  In a softer voice, I hissed “And don’t say anything about the black eye, or else…….”

CB wasted no time and produced a copy of an article on the results of a global survey on courtesy.  Sigh. What’s new? I have heard about the findings of such a survey many times but never bothered myself with it. So I was about to scream murder and tell him off for waking me up for nothing when I remembered my mission – IRKING MIGHTY MOUTH.

So I humored CB.  I encouraged him. And he became a man possessed, jumping all over the place, muttering gibberish and gesturing like a monkey, trying to voice his opinions about the findings of the survey.  After he had calmed down, I took the crumpled article from him. CB is patriotic to the core. Any adverse comment about his beloved Singapore and his fellow Singaporeans and he would turn into Mr. Hyde.

And you know what? I couldn’t believe my eyes.  I thought  I was still dreaming. Singapore? Ranked 31 out of 35 main cities around the world in the survey on Courtesy Index? Four spots more and we will be crowned the most discourteous city in the world!  What happened to the myriads of government sponsored courtesy campaigns culminating in the “Singapore Kindness Movement?” All the efforts gone down the drain? And to add insult to injury, we scored only 42 points out of 100?

 In academic achievement minded Singapore, that was a disaster! If I had done that badly in school, my mum would have killed me!    Okay, I once ranked  31. But that was in a class of 36, not 35. Even then, I was nearly killed. And I still have the scars to show for it – most of them emotional in nature. I talk to myself whenever there is a full moon, sometimes when there is no moon. And  all the time when the wife’s mother is in residence. And she has been in residence since the day I married her daughter. She moved in before the daughter did. Sigh.

I roped in an eager CB to conduct a poll on how Singaporeans would react to the results of this courtesy survey.

Almost 30% of the folks polled  were affected enough to suffer from  severe indigestion  while another 30%  suffered from severe constipation. The rest suffered from pain in that part of their anatomy which was used to sit on the fence.