Kapiolani Community College
Diamond Journal 2004

Not the Brightest Color In the Crayon Box,
But I Love Her Anyway

Trisha J.C. Chaves “Did you know that you can get lead poisoning if you get poked with a pencil?” That pretty much sums up my cousin Jaime in a nutshell. Don’t get me wrong, I love my cousin, but sometimes she just doesn’t get it. Actually, that’s kind of why I like her so much. You can never tell what wacky thing she’s going to do or say next. We get along the best out of all my cousins because we are almost the same age (she’s about 2 months older than I am), but sometimes I feel like I’m the older one. It seems like I have to teach her a lot because things just don’t seem to make sense when she has to learn them on her own. And even though I get a kick out of what she does or says sometimes, there are other times where I really get worried. For instance, there was one day last summer when she thought she could make “gourmet spaghetti” by breaking up raw noodles in an old flimsy plastic butter container. She then poured Prego all over it and threw it in the microwave-with the fork! It’s a good thing I was there to stop her before she started the microwave because I shudder to think about what could have happened.

Well, this summer we are a little older and hopefully some of us are a little wiser, if you know what I mean. I’m staying at my grandmother’s house for the summer out in Kaneohe. I don’t want to be out there all alone far away from my cousins and have no one to play with so I invited my cousin, Jaime to stay with me for a little while. I can’t wait to see what she’s going to say or do this summer, but I’m sure it will be as memorable as every other year!

“ So what do you want to do today,” asked Jaime who was lying on my bed next to me staring at the ceiling and twiddling her thumbs. She was already showered and dressed, wearing neon green shorts and a neon pink tank top to match with her hair in a ponytail ready for whatever action may lie ahead.

“I don’t know,” I yawned. “What are you doing?”

“ Well, I was watching you sleep for a bit, but then I got bored, so I decided to twiddle my thumbs because that’s what people are supposed to do when they’re bored. At least that’s what I think. Anyway, that made me even more bored, so I decided to wake you up.” She stopped the tango her thumbs were performing and turned toward me and asked again, “So what do you want to do?”

“ Let me wake up a little first; then we’ll come up with a plan.”

I took a shower and got dressed in my favorite outfit; purple shorts and a matching purple sleeveless shirt with a hood. We ran downstairs in our usual morning race because it’s not fun to go anywhere unless you are traveling really fast.

“ Trisha! Jaime! Stop running down the stairs! You’ll trip and fall. I don’t want you to hurt yourselves,” yelled my grandmother from the kitchen. “Ie-ya,” she sighed and shook her head. It’s funny to hear her shout at us with her Chinese accent, but when you are actually there standing in front of her it can be a little scary. Her eyes grow and almost look like they’re bugging out. Her big grey hair and tons of make-up really adds to her wrath too. But a second later she’s back to being Grandma, watching her beloved game shows and preparing breakfast without a hint she ever got angry.

Jaime and I sat at the table to eat our breakfast and I tried to reassure my grandmother that we wouldn’t fall down the stairs and get hurt.

“ Grandma, we’re not little kids anymore. We’re both 8. That’s almost ten! We’re practically young ladies and young ladies don’t fall down the stairs.”

“ Young ladies also don’t run down the steps like a herd of elephants.”
Feeling defeated, I quietly went back to eating my cereal. Then Jaime broke the silence with her usual quirky thoughts and unknowingly salvaged my fading good mood.

“ Do they have a different kind of money in the mainland? You know, China has Chinese money. Japan has Japanese money. Does the Mainland have… Mainland money?”

I busted out laughing! Here we go! Jaime is right on schedule with her little anecdotes. I could hardly contain myself, or the milk that was about to come out of my nose.

“ Are you kidding me?! If the Mainland had Mainland money then Hawaii has Hawaiian money. Think about it, Jaime. Have you ever heard of Hawaiian money before? Hawaii is a part of the mainland. We use American money because we’re in America!”

“ Oh, yeah… I knew that…”

“ Jaime, you crack me up,” I say with a smile.
Jaime succeeded in lifting my mood, but now she now felt a little ashamed and defeated, too so I decided to change the subject.

“ So have you thought about what we’re going to do today?” I asked.

“ Well, it’s a nice day so I thought we’d play outside, but it gets kind of boring playing in the back yard all the time. Let’s go somewhere else.”

“ Jeez, you’re always getting bored,” I whined.

“ We always do the same things, that’s why. Anyway, I was thinking we should go search for some peacocks. I always see them when we’re riding in the car, but I’ve never actually seen them up close. Have you?”

Come to think of it-I haven’t. It sounded like such a great idea! I was so amazed that Jaime had thought of it first, but maybe that’s just her wisdom finally kicking in. I was proud of her and couldn’t wait to get our exciting day started. Too bad for us my grandmother was right there to rain on our parade.

“ No! You shouldn’t go chasing peacocks! They’ll get angry and chase you. They’ll poke your eye out,” my grandmother warned.

I just had to chuckle at what my grandmother had said. It was almost like that line in the movie, A Christmas Story. “You’ll shoot your eye out!” Is that just some kind of universal grown-up saying? Because I know my grandmother has never seen that movie before. Do all adults think us kids are going to lose an eye?

“ They’re not going to poke our eyes out. We’re too fast for them! We can outrun anything,” I boasted.

“ Yeah, anything!” Jaime cheered on. We get up from our half-eaten breakfast and start toward the front door.

“ You’ll both be in big trouble if you walk out that door,” my grandmother warned again.

“ Too bad, you can’t stop us, we’re too fast for you,” I yell back. Why does my grandma always have to be so cautious? The moment we do something fun like have a speed race down the stairs or want to venture around the neighborhood she gets all stuffy and uptight. We’re big girls and we can handle being outside. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?

I grabbed Jaime by the hand and we ran out the front door.

“ I don’t know about this, Trisha. Your grandmother seemed pretty mad. I mean, did you see how far her eyes went out this time? Maybe we should go back. She might be right; we could get our eyes poked out.”

“ Oh, don’t be silly. We can’t get our eyes poked out. We have nothing to worry about out here. Come on, you came up with the idea so let’s go!” I couldn’t believe that she seriously thought that we were going to lose an eye, but then again, that’s just Jaime.
We started on our quest for peacocks walking down the street away from my grandmother’s house. We turned into a new part of the neighborhood where we saw new houses being built. We didn’t see any builders around so Jaime and I figured this would be the best place to search since the peacocks didn’t like to hang out where a lot of people were.

We walked through the empty lots and around huge holes where new foundations were going to go.
Jaime peered at the giant holes in the ground and said, “Those are going to be funny looking pools. They’re shaped weird and aren’t that deep. We wouldn’t even be able to swim in them.”

“ That’s not for a pool. It’s for… Oh, never mind. Let’s keep looking,” I said impatiently. I was really trying to concentrate on finding our prey.

We looked all over for the peacocks we so desperately wanted to see. We must have been looking for about an hour when we started getting really frustrated that we hadn’t found anything yet.

“ See, I was right when I said that we wouldn’t get our eyes poked out. There isn’t anything out here to do the poking!”

“ I’m bored. Let’s go back to your grandma’s house.”

Gee, that’s a surprise. I don’t understand how this girl can get bored with everything. Maybe that’s why she always says silly things. She could be doing that on purpose, but then again she thought there was such a thing as Mainland money.

I have to admit that I was getting a little bored too so I caved in and we started our walk back to my grandmother’s house. Just then, we heard a strange noise.

“ What is that sound?” I asked. It was the weirdest noise I had ever heard.

“ I don’t know. I’ve never heard anything like it. Where is it coming from?”

We looked everywhere around us. There weren’t any people, just empty lots. It couldn’t be a lawn mower or leaf-blower because there simply wasn’t anyone around to operate them.

“ Is it a peacock?” Jaime wondered.

“ I doubt it, Jaime. Peacocks don’t make buzzing noises. They kind of scream and cry, remember? You’ve heard them.”

“ Oh, yeah…”

Then she spotted something. “Hey, look at that funny looking cloud! That’s weird. It’s a nice clear day out and all of a sudden that cloud came out of nowhere. It has a strange color too.”

She was right. It did have a strange color. It was very dark, almost black, but the color was splotchy. It also looked like the dark colors were moving around somehow. It was nothing like the smooth white clouds we were used to seeing around here. It was as big as all the rooftops on the block and only about 5 or 6 feet overhead. As I stared at the huge hovering mass I noticed very small dots breaking off from the bulk of it, but then they seemed to be drawn right back. All of my attention was focused on the funny looking cloud that I almost didn’t realize that the strange sound we heard earlier was extremely loud now... and coming from the cloud!

I finally realized what the mystery mass was. “That’s no cloud, Jaime. It’s a swarm of bees!” I was terrified. I had been stung once before a few years ago and I could clearly remember how it felt. I knew I definitely didn’t want to feel anything like that again.

“ RUN!!!” we shouted in unison.

“ I can’t believe you talked me into coming out here to look for stupid peacocks,” I shrieked at my cousin. We ran as fast as we could, but no matter how fast we
ran, they were right there behind us.

“ I didn’t talk you into it! You pulled me outside and I wanted to go back!”

“ But it was your stupid idea! Oh, never mind that now. I think they’re following us!” Indeed, they were following us. Every turn we took, every short cut we chose, they were still hot on our tail. I couldn’t believe how far away we had gotten from my grandmother’s house, but I suppose any destination seems far when your running for your life. My legs began to hurt and I got so out of breath I now hated running fast, but I knew I still had to keep going.

“ They’re going to eat us alive!” Even in this frightening time, I actually giggled to myself when my cousin thought the bees were going to eat us. My grandmother’s house was in sight so we picked up the pace.

“ Now are you bored?” I huffed.

We ran into the front door, slamming it shut behind us. I was amazed that we made it without getting “eaten alive” as Jaime stated. My cousin and I danced and sang, celebrating our victory. We couldn’t dance much more because we were incredibly exhausted so went in the living room and collapsed on the couch. Just when we thought we were safe I started to hear that strange sound again almost as loud as when we were outside. We got up to see where it was coming from. We headed toward the kitchen and the sound got louder and louder. We peered out the kitchen window and discovered that the bees had accumulated on a bush in my grandmother’s back yard! They wanted to build a new home and of all places they chose this back yard. Jaime and I had just outrun these monstrous things and we weren’t about to have them take over our very own sanctuary. My grandmother was taking a nap upstairs so it was up to us to get rid of these pests. We thought about what we could do as we watched the bush grow with more bees.

“ I know! We’ll go back there and throw rocks at the bush to get them off. Then they’ll have to go find another home somewhere else,” Jaime said.

This was a desperate time for desperate measures and I was so excited I wasn’t thinking straight. I went along with Jaime’s plan and we went out to the back yard to gather some rocks to prepare for the ambush.

Jaime threw the first rock and I followed with mine. The bees flew off in chunks so we threw more and more. We succeeded in getting them all off the bush, but they failed to find another yard to invade and instead continued to stay in ours. They became furious since we interrupted the construction of their new home and started swarming all around us.

“ Ahhh!!! Oh my gosh! They’re everywhere!” We flailed our arms and screamed to prevent to bees from landing on our bodies.

“ One is on your head,” Jaime pointed out to me.

“ What?! Where?! Get it off,” I pleaded.

“ Ok, I’ve got an idea! Bend your head toward me.”

I know from all of my previous experiences when Jaime comes up with a plan, I should disregard it and just come up with an idea myself. But once again, I was too worked up to think. I stared at the ground waiting for Jaime to brush off the bee with her hand, but instead she kicked me right on the top of my head. I fell to the ground and woke up a few seconds later remembering what had just happened.

“ What the heck did you do that for? That was your great idea? What were you thinking,” I asked her as I felt the huge lump on my head along with the bee guts that were splattered throughout my hair. “Do you have any idea how much that hurt?!”

“ The bee was dirty and squirmy and gross. I didn’t want to touch it. How else was I supposed to get it off?”

“ A stick, a leaf, I don’t know, anything but your foot! Of all the dumb things you’ve done, Jaime this takes the cake! You knocked me unconscious!”
Suddenly, as if the bees could sense my pain brought on by Jaime’s ingenious solution, they finally let up and headed for another yard.

From that day on, every time Jaime thought of a self-proclaimed “great idea” I really made an effort to stop and think about what she was saying. It’s unfortunate that I had to get the daylights knocked out of me to really realize that maybe she’s not exactly the best person to get advice from. But now when I look back on that memorable day, I’m able to laugh about what happened. If she didn’t have these crazy ideas or say strange things then who would she be? She definitely wouldn’t be the same fun person I’d rather hang out with over anyone else. She is who she is and also very aware that she’s not exactly the brightest color in the crayon box, but you know what? I love her anyway.