Schoolpen?

So everywhere you go in Nepal, kids come up and say "One school pen for me?" Little bastards know that Tourist isn't good for candy (cos He's A Grown-Up) so they go for the "schoolpen" which they could maybe trade for candy at a store.

Macke and I call this "getting schoolpenned," as in, "did you get schoolpenned by that kid in the red boots?"

Our typical response is to say to the kids "One school pen for ME?" and hold out an open hand. This fucks them up nicely and makes them laugh, too.

I've been schoolpenned about 8 million times. It gets old pretty quick. Somebody, some time ago, gave some Nepali kid a pen, and-- in the way of colds and nursery rhymes-- the tactic has spread into India and Tibet. Actually it's seriously irritating.

SO TODAY Macke and I are sitting with our 200 lb. of food for our massive 4-day trek. We are sitting outside the Wang Bung Dung supermarket watching the human world pass by, waiting for Die Blume, who is off looking for a Visa-card friendly ATM. Tibetan kids pester us for yuan and the Chinese stare at the ever-hairier Macke with the weird shades and his new foldable cowboy hat and me with my hairy goddamn knees. Tibetans have no body hair.

This little girl maybe 8 comes up. She's got braided hair, looks halfway Tibetan and halfway Chinese, with this cute cap-- a child molester's wet dream, basically-- and much to our surprise asks us for the receipts from the supermarket. She's got a bag of them.

The receipts? We hand them over and the girl smiles and says "tank you" and disappears into the store.

Then we get it-- she's collecting receipts and using the supermarket's customer points system to pick up a few goodies.

Two minutes later she is back. And hands me a pen. A schoolpen.

"Dude!" says Macke, cracking up, "you just schoolpenned a Tibetan!"