Revenge of the Saipan Sign Squiggle Squad

Let’s go old school for starters: One of my first impressions of Saipan was the mysterious signs with their exotic squiggles. That gig went from abstract to real when I was carousing with some friends one evening, all those years ago, wandering from one place to another along Beach Road. We weren’t making much progress, though, since everyone except me was engrossed in trying to decipher the Asian signs.

Back then I couldn’t even tell the difference between Chinese, Japanese (which incorporates some Chinese), and Korean scripts. Talk about a Saipan newbie, eh?

As for my new friends, all of whom had a smattering of Eastern language skills, they’d stop in front of any store showcasing Asian script. Me, I’d skulk in the background, hands jammed into my pockets, feeling impatient to get moving to happy hour. But everyone else would be arrayed in front of the script, gawking at it like biologists inspecting a new species of bugs in the field.

“What’s that character mean?” someone would say.

“I think it means ‘shrimp,’” someone else would say.

“No, it means ‘humane,’” was another opinion.

“Actually, I think it means ‘kernel,’” was another idea.

“I think it means ‘two people,’” came a final suggestion.

Egads! Which is it? After all that gawking and study and discussion, you’d think they’d figure it out, right? Wrong. Yet the wide range of opinions seemed to meet some secret standard for consensus. For those in the Saipan Sign Squiggle Squad, there was apparently a plane of logic invisible to other people, a plane on which Shrimp/Humane/Kernel/Two People are acceptably interchangeable concepts.

Strange? Yes. And hopeless? Entirely. It was like watching people trying to eat soup with chopsticks.

I thought it was just some weird Saipan affliction, perhaps one that came from too many days going hatless under the tropical sun. But, whatever the reason, I knew that at least I would never (never!) turn into one of those Squiggle gazers, ensnared in a trap of knowing just enough about the script to be intrigued, but not enough to be functionally literate.

Yes, a sorry fate indeed.

But so much for old school. I’m done with that narrative flashback, which brings me to last week.

Last week my wife and I arrived at a restaurant 30 minutes too early for dinner. And I knew just the way to kill that half-hour: A nearby store had a window festooned with mysterious Chinese writing, and, with Chinese dictionary in hand, we went full-bore trying to piece the puzzle together.

You might want to know how I happened to have that dictionary in the car. Answer: It’s always there.

Yes, talk about all the zeal of a convert. I am now a senior officer in the Squiggle Squad. I can amuse myself for a long time trying to decipher Chinese signs. It drives some of my friends absolutely bonkers, as they mark time, impatiently, hands jammed into their pockets, waiting for me to finish my sign meditations so we can continue on our way.

“So, Ed, what’s it say?” they’ll ask.

But they’re not asking because they care. No, they’re asking as a way of prodding me to get going, and they’re usually too polite to kick me in the kidneys to make the point.

“Well, I think it says either ‘East Bank’ or ‘Car Movement,’” I’ll answer.

“How on earth can you associate those two possibilities?” they’ll ask.

“Dunno,” I’ll say, guarding my kidney zone just in case, “but it was fun to figure it out. Oh, hey, there’s another sign, let’s go take a look.”

Yep, soup and chopsticks. Chopsticks and soup. That’s me.

The interesting (if only tragically so) thing about this gig is that I am not making any progress at all. None. For every character I finally learn, another one drops off the mental conveyor belt. It’s a zero-sum game. Which means that I am now condemned to a lifetime of Squiggle gazing: I’m too stubborn to quit the game, yet too stupid to graduate from it.

Trapped, I tell ya’. Trapped!

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Visit Ed Stephens Jr. at EdStephensJr.com. His column runs every Friday.