{"id":4190,"date":"2015-06-15T16:29:22","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T04:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dfmamea.com\/?p=4190"},"modified":"2017-03-21T18:30:43","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T05:30:43","slug":"good-sick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/good-sick\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Sick"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pic<\/a><\/p>\n

I had a typical 1970s Pacific Islander upbringing: every Sunday began with getting\u00a0up at what felt like first cock’s crow to\u00a0attend a church service, followed by Sunday school, followed by an interminable wait for the adults to finish their networking and whatever, then<\/em> get home for to\u2019ona\u2019i<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u2026Damn<\/em> those Sunday mornings felt like\u00a0forever<\/strong><\/em>. Still, my parents \u2014 bless their jandalled feet\u00a0\u2014\u00a0would, on the way home, sometimes stop\u00a0by a Kentucky or\u00a0Homestead<\/a>\u00a0outlet to pick up some fried chicken\u00a0to add to the to’ona’i\u00a0<\/em>staples of\u00a0rice, sapa sui<\/em>,<\/em>\u00a0corned beef, taro,\u00a0palusami\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0potato salad.<\/p>\n

This tradition continued after\u00a0the Mamea children fled the nest. One Sunday every month, we\u00a0returned to the\u00a0family home\u00a0for to’ona’i<\/em>, us wage- and salary-earners bringing KFC, fish ‘n’ chips and ice cream while my mother prepared the usual staples. In order to deflect parental interrogations of\u00a0our lifestyles and lack of family-starting, we kids introduced a new tradition:\u00a0a family viewing of an action film chosen for its satisfyingly high body count and Old Testament-style morals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Post-meal, my siblings and I would spread out around the sitting room, half-watching the video*,\u00a0and moaning to each other about how full we felt. We didn’t call it overeating. Whatever descriptions we attempted were rarely prefixed with \u2018over-\u2019 or had the words \u2018too much\u2018;\u00a0the word \u2018nausea\u2019 didn’t enter our minds, either.<\/p>\n

We worked with simple, humble \u2018sick\u2019.<\/p>\n

There was a spectrum to the Mamea post-to’ona’i<\/i>\u00a0sick: at one end was \u2018bad sick\u2019 which sometimes necessitated sudden yet discreet visits to the toilet; and\u00a0at the other end was \u2018good sick\u2019 where it was acknowledged that that last piece of chicken may have been a bridge too far but so long as we didn’t move or twitch, the discomfort was manageable.<\/p>\n

I’ve no idea\u00a0how it\u00a0informs\u00a0my writing.<\/p>\n

But now you know there is such a thing as\u00a0good sick<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* And half-watching our mother exhorting the hero on the telly\u00a0to Kill them!\u00a0Kill them all!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a typical 1970s Pacific Islander upbringing: every Sunday began with getting\u00a0up at what felt like first cock’s crow to\u00a0attend a church service, followed by Sunday school, followed by an interminable wait for the adults to finish their networking and whatever, then get home for to\u2019ona\u2019i. \u2026Damn those Sunday mornings felt like\u00a0forever. Still, my … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Good Sick”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4,193],"tags":[1119,13],"class_list":["post-4190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scriptwriting","category-stuff","tag-kfc","tag-toonai"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4190"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4956,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4190\/revisions\/4956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}