The Jade Bracelet

...Krishelle's bloody wrist. So, last night we arrived in Hong Kong to spend the final two days of our Chinese adventure trip. After checking into our high-rise hotel in a residential area on Victoria Harbour, we took to the streets for a late-evening stroll amongst the street vendors. Now confident with our abilities to negotiate well with the Chinese and only purchase what we really want, we wandered into the six-by-two foot store of a tiny Chinese woman selling typical crafts to tourists. She immediately crabbed a jade bracelet that Krishelle wasn't even looking at and started shoving it onto her hand. It wouldn't fit, so she pulled Krishelle behind the small counter, held her forearm in a headlock-style grip while she grabbed a bottle of water to lubricate the wrist and try shoving the bracelet on... meanwhile, Krishelle was silently begging me for help, but it was all happening so fast, I couldn't do anything but stand there in disbelief as I saw the woman, next, reach for a bottle of dish soap and squirt it all over Krishelle's wrist and then lather it up with some more water, then lean backwards into Krishelle as she pulled the jade bracelet onto her wrist. Then, she turned around and stretched her little hand out to Krishelle for payment (obviously, because she knew that bracelet was stuck and was now Krishelle's for keeps!). Oh, and as the woman was shoving the bracelet onto Krishelle's wrist, Krishelle moaned out loud in pain. I feel bad, yes, but it's a really funny story... and, to make the story even more funny, I have video recorded on my digital camera a scene of Krishelle at dinner tonight trying to cut the bracelet from her wrist using a butter knife.

The knife doesn't even scratch the surface of the thing.... she also admitted that the reason she was in the shower so long this morning was because she was trying to get the thing off her wrist using shampoo, bar soap, hot water, etc., etc. I think it's there to stay. After several failed attempt to free herself from the jade bracelet, she suddenly smiled when she remembered that later this week she is going to visit grandpa in Brawley and he can probably take her to his shop and put her wrist in a lathe or something to cut it off. She says she's too embarrassed to go to the E.R. for help. She also says that she doesn't even like the bracelet because she doesn't have anything that goes with it... but, I reminded her that, in fact, she does have something that matches it.... which brings me to our next most ridiculous purchase of this trip -- Krishelle's and Bridgette's matching green suede alpaca-lined waffle stompers they bought in Shanghai on a whim... And, if memory serves, I recall Bridgette saying as she looked at them in the store that she would pay "however much they cost" because she loved them so much! Green Suede Shoes: The only way to describe these shoes that the girls couldn't leave China without is something maybe you'd see a farm boy in 1978 wearing to a High School football game on a cold Friday night. There is nothing lady-like about them, except for maybe the comfort (they are lined with delicious-smelling alpaca wool). The girls were so excited about them that as we walked around Shanghai they kept talking about how they couldn't wait to get back to the hotel to try them on again -- Bridgette took them out of the bag about 17 times that day to admire and worship her new purchase! ...later that evening when we got home, they put them on, stood in front of the full-length mirror and immediately realized what they had done -- Krishelle from the knee down looked like a heavy-equipment operator with horribly ugly new shoes and Bridgette just looked wrong. They were sooooo incredibly sad and kept trying to come up with outfits that would go well with their new ugly shoes, but failed miserably. I, on the other hand, sat on my bed in hysterics and literally almost wet myself... then, they turned on me and asked why I didn't stop them from making the purchase to begin with... but, there was no stopping them, they had put them on in the store and were marching around in them, creating quite a spectacle of themselves... it was great. Okay... enough about the shoes. (Jeff & Eli -- be warned -- you may be getting a souvenir of green shoes from China). Back to the bracelet stuck on Krishelle's wrist. As our time in Hong Kong was drawing to an end, we started thinking of the probable reality of our ankles and wrists swelling to enormous sizes during our marathon flight back home (as had happened to me on the flight to China), and the likelihood of the jade bracelet cutting the circulation to Krishelle's hand somewhere over the north Pacific, causing her hand to slowly turn purple, then black, and then fall off. We decided things were getting serious and we had to do something... So, in a moment of brillance we shoved washclothes from the hotel bathroom between the bracelet and her skin, then, I had her lay flat on the floor with her arm extended straight out in front of her along the ground, and I took a desk chair by the legs and whacked the bracelet until it shattered into four pieces.