Grandpa’s Joke From My Earliest Childhood Memory
Joke 1—I want to pee as boys do, standing up
I am not sure how old I was, probably 3 or 4, for a period of time I liked to ask all kinds of weird but important questions to my grandpa, and it seemed he always had perfect answers. One of such questions is
“Grandpa, why do boys get to pee while standing, but girls like me have to stoop down?”
” oh, that’s because boys like your brother have a jiji (penis of a small boy ) but you don’t. Next time when I go to the market, I will get you one, put it on, then you can pee just like your brother.”
“perfect,” I jumped in joy. “It would be really convenient to have one, and I no longer need to pull down pants and stoop. Besides, the fact my brother has it, but I don’t is unfair. I thought to myself. I was very eager to see my grandpa when he came back from the market, “can I see the Jiji?”
but grandpa always found one reason or another to justify why he didn’t get one, “next time,” he would say so to keep my hopes up. This went on several times.
Finally, one day, some neighbors were visiting when grandpa came back from the market. Overhearing our dialogue, they burst into loud laughs.
Then, I realized that my grandpa was playing a joke on me; adults’ laughs made me feel so silly. Certainty, they were not laughing at grandpapa, only me, as they often seek his opinions and advice.
Although not without disappointment, from that day on I knew I must stop pestering grandpa for a jiji and accepted the fact that I was a girl, and a girl must stoop down to pee.
Grandma continued to play funny jokes on me for as long as I kept asking him all kinds of weird questions. I will try to remember some more tomorrow.
When I got to read tons of psychology or psychoanalysis books, my question was very common among little girls—-it is written in one of Freud’s classical books on psychoanalysis.
English