Butter scotch and memories of hobgoblins

Recently I tried to taste “butterscotch” in India, and I knew it was almost the same as a Japanese “milk shake” I used to drink in my childhood. On Saturdays, when I came back from school in the afternoon, my grandmother sometimes gave me coins and we went to buy our drinks together. I liked to buy cans of butterscotch and my grandmother used to buy a can of coffee. I felt my grandmother drinking her can of coffee was really cool and I wanted to be able to buy a can of coffee someday.

By the way, the taste of butterscotch made me recall my memory of some strange old rumours of people from my childhood.

Tapping Ghost

I used to buy my favourite milkshake cans from a drink dispenser near my house. The dispenser was quite famous as a dangerous place in the children’s world of my village. They said “when you buy a can from the dispenser, you will notice that someone be tapping your right shoulder with his finger. Never turn your face towards it, otherwise you will be possessed by the ghost.” The person poking your shoulder is a ghost who died on a road beside the dispenser from a traffic accident. Children also said, “If you turn to the ghost by mistake, you should make an angry face to the ghost so that it doesn’t possess you.” I was tense when I bought canned drinks from the dispenser.

Bunny-hopping Granma

The road beside the dispenser had another rumour. The story is if you go to the road at midnight, you can see an old lady ghost going all out bunny-hopping on the road. However, when I told the story to my friend, she also knew the story and said that the lady was not a ghost but actually a grandmother of our neighbour who lost her mind. The friend was told that by her mother. I am not sure if it was true. Even if the grandmother lost her mind, she was too old to bunny-hop on the street, or can people who lose their mind do impossible jobs? Anyway, it was a kind of horror story, too.

Chewing Granma

Talking of strange old ladies, there was a lady called “Chewing Granma” in my town. She moved her jaw all the time like she was eating something and never stopped chewing. I don’t know if she was suffering from senile dementia, but she might have some problem in her jawbone or in the connection between her brain and her jaw. Since she had taken a walk with her stroller through a parking area of the biggest grocery store in the town every day, she was quite famous in our small world. Why she became “Chewing Granma” was because she drank too many bottles of coke in her childhood. This was such a famous story that we believed that coke would melt human bones. I suspect that the story was created by some mother of my friends addicted to coke, because I can’t believe Chewing Granma could drink so much coke in her childhood days. It was obviously well before World War II. However we had no idea about the history of coke, so my friend and I avoided drinking coke in those days. We didn’t want to be a “Chewing” anything.

Men-Dou Granddad

Now again I recalled one impressive old man who lived on the way from my elementary school to my house. He was called “Men-dou Granddad” because he shouted “Men! Dou!” to children, practicing with a bamboo sword when they passed by him. “Men!” and “Dou!” are Kendo words. (In Kendo, they shout “Men!” when hitting an enemy's head with a bamboo sword, and they shout “Dou!” when hitting an enemy's waist.) I suppose he was a teacher of Kendo. My friend and I visited his yard every day after school and called him at his front door, “Men-dou granddad, Can we have water please?!” Then he shouted “Men! Dou!” to us. We believed that was the positive answer, so we drank water from a faucet by his small pond every day. Even when we weren’t thirsty, we visited him for fun. After all, I have never heard any other words except “Men! Dou!”

The Man Who Has An Axe

It is not a story of old people, but there was a young crazy man called “The man who has an axe” He lived on the way to school and was waiting for children who came back to their house with an axe. If children said bad words to him, he got angry and chased children shaking the axe. Because I hadn’t met him, when I heard the story I thought that was a rumour as usual. However, one day all the children in my school were gathered in the school yard and the principal started to tell us not to use the road by the crazy man’s house. Some kids actually seemed to have been chased by him. I was surprised that the story was true and shocked by the way the teachers protected the children. I must have considered the contradiction between social security and the privacy of people who have mental problems.

Commentary Guy

In my university days I met a man I named “Commentary Guy” on a train. The train was crowded so I was standing in the corner beside the guy. When I became slightly sleepy I closed my eyes and put my hand on my face and he suddenly started to broadcast my activities beside me in a low voice. “She closed her eyes and put her hands on her face….” he said. First I thought I was mishearing, but when I sat on the floor he clearly said “Now she sat on the floor.” I saw him but he didn’t face me but was staring at one point of the train’s floor. I was watching him in order to find the purpose of his commentary, and I felt it was his habit and he might not to be able to stop the commentary. He continued until I got off the train at the second stop.

I have heard many strange stories and seen many strange people. I would like to write about “Origami Uncle” and “Skirt Uncle” and “Patriarch in driving school” too, but it would be too much for now. My friends and I used to talk about them all the time as if they were hobgoblins. For me, many people still look like hobgoblins, whose behaviour and mind I never understood and never connected them to each other. I have tried to imagine their nature and logic but almost all of my efforts have failed so far.