An afternoon expedition with Taikun at the gas station

After returning from a grocery shopping trip with all family members, Taikun took a short nap. After his waking up, I volunteered to take him outside for a walk. Of course, per his request, the destination was to a nearby gas station. He hoped to play with the gas fillers there—an all-time dream which cannot be easily satisfied since the chance for a gas station visit is only once-a-week at most.

After several stops (say picking dandelions on the road), we arrived the gas station he dreamed of, and approached to a filling machine. He asked me to take out a filler, and then played with it for a while. He became very excited while the machine started to beep when the filler left its holder.

As we became fascinated with playing the filler when ignoring the on-going beeping, I noticed some customers started to point at us, before a gentleman, who I soon recognized as the owner of the gas station, showed up before us. He smiled, before I quickly took the filler from Taikun’s hand and return it to the manager. “I am sorry for the kid’s playing with it,” I apologized.  The manager then returned the filler to the holder and left.

Taikun, after witnessing all these unexpected developments, burst into tears and started to cry out loud. This scene was not new—there was a similar situation when he bited the ketchup can on the table in a restaurant in Erie PA. He was very frustration and started crying out loud after being corrected (or "scolded" actually) by a restaurant worker. Of course, I followed my apology on the scene. This time, the situation appeared to be more manageable since there were not many people around us then.

Taikun cried louder and louder, and couldn’t seem to be to be able to be stopped no matter how hard I tried to soothe him.  I managed to hold him up in my left arm, and proposed going to walk over the bridge (Walkway-over-the-Hudson). He said no. I then proposed to go to the park for the playset, his favorite.  He also refused.  Finally I said, then let’s go home. He nodded.

Then, he cried all the way sitting in my arm to home. Now he was pretty heavy (36.5 lb= 16.5 kg) and I felt my arm was about to break when arriving home. Luckily there were no many pedestrians on the way home, avoid embarrassing attention.

Family members look surprised--since we were home earlier then expected—I quickly explained to them what happened.  I then delved into my office for my chores because even me I felt very awkward for roping ourselves into this .

Surprisingly, Taikun explained what happened to us to them in the kitchen later on. Although lack of the necessary conjunctions and prepositions, he got the events crossed very well by using keywords:


A-kun ki chit-tou ba-lang-dou papa hia e Ga-u-chan e chin. (A-kun went to there to play the filler of gas of a father of another family [that is, the "stranger" man])

Bi-bi giou. (It beeped.)

Ba-lang-dou e papa tei-ki.  (The father of another family [A stranger man] took it.)

A-go, Ba-lang-dou e papa m-tang chit-tou (Also, a father of other home [said I] am not allowed to play [it])

A-kun kow. (A-kun cried.)

Baba gong “sorry.”(Papa said "sorry" [this word in English] )

Baba gong ki-guet-giow. Wa gong bo-ai. (Papa said going to cross the bridge. I said no [not want to])

Baba gong ki gong-hnng. Wa gong bo-ai. (Papa said going to the park. I said no.) 

A-kun do mo-ai-ki (A-kun just didn’t want to go), doue do-dn-lai-a (and then, returned home.)

Later in the evening, he repeated the episode in similar words for several times. Annie said, this was really a surprise----so from now on we have to be careful for all things we do or say, since there is no secret any more---he would repeat everything he sees and experiences afterwards.

So for today, despite the embarrassment (if it didn't qualify a disaster), at least he made a huge linguistic progress: he is able to describe what happened using a story, though still fragmented, to his family members. This is the redeeming value of today's expedition, I think!