Read Trying to Float for Free Online

me to school on time, but my dad would soon get distracted, and the next thing I knew, I was in the middle of the street with him, traffic swerving and honking around us, trying to get a cab totake us the eight blocks between our house and the school. Needless to say, I was never on time.
    One day, before I’d finished breakfast, my father, heading out the door, announced that he was picking something up from his tailor (a short Korean gentleman, whose shop was across the street). He would meet me in the lobby of the hotel.
    â€œDon’t worry,” he said, “we’ll have plenty of time to get to school,”
    When Father didn’t show up in the lobby, I walked across to the tailor. Staring in the window, I noticed the tailor and his wife, tucked behind the counter, going about their business, and there, just in front of the counter, was my father, lying on the floor. Next to him, also on the floor, was a woman. Both of them were surrounded by springing fish.
    On the way to school, Father explained what had transpired so that I could better inform my teacher of why I was late:
    For years he had been engaged in a “gentle back and forth” with the tailor (which was curious, since I am pretty sure the tailor spoke no English and my father no Korean) about the photographs on the walls of his shop. The photographs, according to Father, were of the tailor flying through the air, striking much larger men, often simultaneously, with his fists, feet, and head.
    Father’s idea of a “gentle back and forth” was to stare closely at the pictures and then insinuate that they had been doctored, created by the tailor and his wife to discouragecustomers from complaining about the prices of their alterations.
    The other slice of the “back and forth” was when Father would spot the Korean leaving to run an errand. He and I would sneak into the shop and hide in the dressing rooms. When the Korean returned, we would jump out and try to scare him or wait until he was with a customer and start making the noises of a child being tortured.
    Contrary to father’s suggestions, the tailor was a master of a little-known Korean marshal art—hapkido. In any case, just before I had arrived at the shop, Father had gone too far and the tailor had decided to teach him a lesson.
    That day, my father learned that the tailor’s ability to paralyze others had little to do with blows to the head, but with his knowledge of various points on the human body, which when pressed in the correct manner sent the strongest men to the ground.
    When handing my father his slacks that morning, the tailor slipped his finger into Father’s palm. The pain from the tailor’s finger, combined with whatever my father had been drinking the night before, caused him to wobble back and forth and then collapse.
    â€œKnowing that my head was seconds from the floor,” Father recounted, “I had the presence of mind to flip myself backwards towards a bag of clothes near the door.”
    â€œAnd the woman?”
    â€œThe one on the floor?”
    He was avoiding the question.
    â€œYes, Father, the one on the floor.”
    He cleared his throat.
    â€œShe was carrying the bag.”
    â€œSo you threw yourself on top of a bag that a woman was holding!”
    â€œSomething like that.”
    â€œAnd that knocked her against the fish tank?”
    â€œThe details are of no importance. Agility of mind and body, my little friend, saved me.”
    â€œBut not the fish.”
    â€œSadly no.”
    â€œAnd the woman?”
    â€œThe tailor stitched her up.”
    He paused a moment.
    â€œDo you want me to call your teacher up and talk to her myself?”
    â€œNo, that’s fine. I’ll tell her you have jumping Frenchman’s disease.”
    â€œThat’s my girl.”

A LEG UP
    â€œHE’S DONE IT again!”
    Mr. Crafty was in a state.
    â€œFather?” I replied. It was not