女兒(禮物）語錄(26）Quote of My Daughter（’s gift)(26)

曾铮

“Rule #1 and Rule #2” 「媽媽規則#1及#2」

Photo: Jennifer's daughter's gift to her mother.
圖：曾錚的女兒送她的禮物。

In the language school my daughter first attended after she came to Australia, there were a lot of more mature students, with some of them as “old” as 19. A lot of those older students had part-time jobs somewhere and could earn some income.
在女兒剛到澳洲所上的語言學校裏，什麼樣年齡的學生都有，最大的都19歲了。有的年齡大些的學生在不同地方打工掙錢。女兒知道後非常羨慕，也非常想去打工掙錢。
I daughter became very interested; and wanted to have a part-time job very much. I said to her, ”No, you are too young to work.” But one day when I took her to shopping, I found that while I was busy at looking at different stuff, she was actually asking the shop owners whether they needed extra workers. She was turned down by the first shop owner, who was a Chinese and could tell that she was too young.
我說，「不行啊，你年齡太小還不能打工。」結果她根本沒打算放棄。有一次我帶她上街買菜時，我在這邊挑菜，她卻溜到一邊去問店老闆：「你們要人嗎？」第一個店老闆是華人，一看就知道她太小，拒絕了她。但她也不氣餒，見店就進、就問，結果就真有一家水果店說可以讓她去試試。
However, my daughter didn’t give up. She talked to every shop owner on the street while I was shopping; and was finally accepted by a westerner owner of a grocery shop, who couldn’t tell my daughter’s actually age as she was tall enough.
I asked her, “Did you lie about your age?”
“No, I didn’t. He didn’t ask my age at all.”
我說：「你可不許撒謊。你有沒有告訴他你多大了？」
女兒說：「我沒撒謊，他根本沒問我年齡。」
Seeing that she really wanted to try, and considering that working in an English speaking environment could help her to improve her English, I gave in again.
So she started working in that grocery shop as a cashier and quickly learnt the names of all the different and strange names of all kinds of fruit and vegetables. So later on, whenever I encountered something which I didn’t know the name, I just asked her, and she always had an answer for me. The “bad” consequence of this is, to this day, I still don’t know the English names of many of the fruit and vegetables.
我看女兒真是太想打工了，老闆也已經答應錄用她，就不太想拂她的意，再說在西人店裏，老闆和顧客都是西人，也能促使她快點學英文，所以就也由她去了。
自此她開始在那家水果店打工，做收銀員，很快就學會了所有水果和蔬菜的英文名字，以致我後來一直依賴於她，每遇到不知其名的水果和蔬菜時，就問她，而她肯定知道。「依賴心」的嚴重後果是，到今天爲止，我仍然不知道許多水果和蔬菜的英文名是什麼。
So, she started earning her pocket money very soon. And this was a gift she bought for me, which says,
“Rule #1
Mum Is Always Right.
Rule #2
If Mum is wrong, see rule #1."
就這樣，女兒很快就開始有大量的零花錢了。我算了一下，她如果週末兩天都打工，每天做10小時的話，她自己掙的錢應該就夠她自己一個星期所有的生活開支了，包括房租。在澳洲掙錢真就這麼容易，一個十幾歲的孩子就可以養活自己。
所以呢，很快女兒就買了這個禮物給我，上面寫著：
「規則1：媽媽永遠是對的。
規則2：如果媽媽錯了，請參看規則1。」