オーストラリア人が小学生の頃の苦い思い出をReader's Digest 10月号に書いていました。タイトルのA fish out of waterは、厚紙で作った魚にクリップを付け、床に並べて魚釣りをする遊びの授業での経験から来ています。
Almose all of us remember what we thought and felt on our first day of school. It offers a smal window into our pasts, or at least a rare satellite pass over that foreign country.
I had no difficulty letting go of my mother's hand on that fateful day, if only because I'd refused to hold it in the first place. "Someone might see us," she remembers me saying, as if we were adulterous lovers. To avoid the risk of being sprung in public I even made her walk on the other side of the street.
Nor was I traumatised by the generous Grade 2 boy who offered me, with a kindly smile, a Chinese burn at morning recess.
オーストラリア人でもこんな感覚があるのかと意外に感じました。それはそうとして、私の関心は "Chinese burn" の意味です。辞書で調べます。
・Collins Dictionary: a minor torture inflicted by twisting the skin of a person's wrist or arm in two different directions simultaneously: I was giving him a Chinese burn while kicking at Stan to stop him reaching me.
・Urban Dictionary: A basic form of causing physical pain that is usually experienced for the first time in infant school. It invloves gripping the top of somebody's forearm with both hands then rotating the hands in opposite directions, thus stretching the skin. Tolerance to this increases with age, unless a meathead tries it and mangles not only your skin, but your muscles, ligaments and bones also.
1. Aww, I let my little cousin give me a chines burn today, and I pretended it hurt me.
2. Johnny Meatface wrestled me to the ground today and give me a chinese burn. I couldn't even breathe, let alone scream.
なるほど。
Almose all of us remember what we thought and felt on our first day of school. It offers a smal window into our pasts, or at least a rare satellite pass over that foreign country.
I had no difficulty letting go of my mother's hand on that fateful day, if only because I'd refused to hold it in the first place. "Someone might see us," she remembers me saying, as if we were adulterous lovers. To avoid the risk of being sprung in public I even made her walk on the other side of the street.
Nor was I traumatised by the generous Grade 2 boy who offered me, with a kindly smile, a Chinese burn at morning recess.
オーストラリア人でもこんな感覚があるのかと意外に感じました。それはそうとして、私の関心は "Chinese burn" の意味です。辞書で調べます。
・Collins Dictionary: a minor torture inflicted by twisting the skin of a person's wrist or arm in two different directions simultaneously: I was giving him a Chinese burn while kicking at Stan to stop him reaching me.
・Urban Dictionary: A basic form of causing physical pain that is usually experienced for the first time in infant school. It invloves gripping the top of somebody's forearm with both hands then rotating the hands in opposite directions, thus stretching the skin. Tolerance to this increases with age, unless a meathead tries it and mangles not only your skin, but your muscles, ligaments and bones also.
1. Aww, I let my little cousin give me a chines burn today, and I pretended it hurt me.
2. Johnny Meatface wrestled me to the ground today and give me a chinese burn. I couldn't even breathe, let alone scream.
なるほど。
トータル
