Please Direct Me To The Mahalo

This is a post about trash cans. Specifically, the kinds of trash cans you see at fast-food places, which always seem to have "THANK YOU" printed on them.

Right now, I'm in Hawai'i for a family vacation--my first time coming here for any span of time less than a year. When I was younger, on three different occasions, my family lived here more or less permanently. I freely admit to having loved everything about it except for fourth grade (long story involving an abusive teacher and two sets of bullying classmates).

One of the things I've always especially loved about Hawai'i is the language. You have to learn at least a little bit just to get around every day, at least enough to be able to pronounce the names of the streets and figure out whether you belong in the "kane" or "wahine" bathroom. Just basic survival matters like that. And it's a beautiful, deceptively simple language (at least until you're confronted by the fact that the state fish is known as the humuhumunukunukuapua'a, meaning "a fish with a nose like a pig").

Of course, in the Hawaiian language, the word for "thank you" is "mahalo." Which brings me back to the title of this post: has it occurred to no one else that someone from another country who speaks another language might come to America and assume based on the tradition of the polite fast-food trash cans that "thank you" means "trash can"? I would never have thought of it were it not for the fact that my dad has made a habit, every time we come to Hawai'i, of joking that "mahalo" must mean "trash can." After all, it's carved into the lid right there.

We attended our old church yesterday, and interestingly the pastor gave us a survey about military families that he wants to use to plan his next sermon series. Oddly, he had a number of possible relationships to the military with checkboxes at the bottom, to indicate one's perspective--but "child of a servicemember" wasn't an option. Perhaps I ought to make a blog post in answer to his survey.

As I finish this post, we are headed to Punchbowl Cemetery. I promised my aunt BabyBlue (of BabyBlueOnline) that I would lay flowers on her mother's grave, and while we're there we are also going to visit Auntie BJ and Uncle Earl's graves (no relation, that's just how Hawaiians talk about close friends of older generations).