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Yellow Payphone is a website dedicated to cultural critique. Writing is the primary medium used to engage with culture on Yellow Payphone (though there are videos and other forms of media), so please explore and read about music, sport, travel, and all things Culture.

The name Yellow Payphone grew out of a brief social interaction. So, if you’re curious, I thought I would share that story.

The Origin of Yellow Payphone

On a university campus in Chengdu, located in China’s Sichuan province, I walked down the sidewalk. I was thinking through a piece of writing. As I was more present in the thinking than the walking, I hadn’t noticed a boy and his caretaker until I was nearly upon them. The boy appeared to be about six years old and walked in the unmoored, aimless manner of his age. He chattered unselfconsciously in what I assume was Mandarin. Owing to my pitiful knowledge of local language, he may as well have been speaking gibberish, as children sometimes do.

The boy’s middle-aged male caretaker treated the jabbering the same way I might have; he ignored it. The boy jawed, looked from the sidewalk to his caretaker and back, further corrupting his meandering gait. Owing to the boy’s short legs and inattention to the task of walking, I gained on him but struggled to maintain the sidewalk in my effort to walk past him.

With the boy concentrating on the sidewalk and maintaining a straight line, I attempted to pass.

When he again broke walking focus to survey his surroundings and check on his caretaker, he looked up and over his shoulder to the location in space where recent history dictated that his caretaker should be following. Instead of finding a familiar face occupying that space, he saw mine.

Waiguoren. The face of a six-foot foreigner. Caucasian, blue eyes, brown hair, sweating from a work-out in the heat of a Chengdu summer. Not the five-foot-six-inch, black haired, casually dressed human he expected.

The schism between casual expectation and reality might have terrified other children his age, but this boy was giddy. He smiled broadly before increasing the volume and velocity of his chattering. Whether it was Mandarin or gibberish that the boy spoke did not matter as I don’t speak Mandarin or gibberish. I’m certain he thought I understood him. The fact that all vocabulary is not share was outside of this boy’s realm of the possible. Children are egocentric. In his head, I understood what he was saying. I swear I didn’t though.

Perhaps he told me he was gonna beat me up and take my lunch money. Perhaps he said it would rain that afternoon. Perhaps he proposed an impromptu, improvised game of “King of the Sidewalk.” In this game, he ran ahead and kept me trapped behind him on the sidewalk, unable to walk past. Whimsicality took hold on witnessing his enthusiasm and I joined in his game.

Taking fast-paced quarter-steps, I feigned efforts at getting around him. Where moments before, social mores dictated that I couldn’t quite pass, I now acted out with dramatic flair the anxiety of someone unable to walk past a stranger on the sidewalk for fear of coming into unsolicited physical contact. My shorter steps combined with the rapid churning of my feet gave an illusion of maximum exertion. The boy cackled at his realization that owing to his speed and agility, he was the Sidewalk King.

Again he gained a few paces’ advantage, turned around, and ‘cornered me’ on the sidewalk. I used a series of jab steps to get around him and escape the trap. I kept my micro-steps churning though, and he again outpaced and cornered me.

The boy’s caretaker caught up with the combatants whose progress was slowed by repeated cornerings and the ensuing jukeing. The caretaker thus became an obstacle, a pillar that cut the sidewalk’s juke space in half.

This loss might have been a tragedy, might have found me doomed to inevitable capture, but I saw it as a fortunate out. I suffer from a short attention span brought on by years of channel surfing, web surfing, and text messaging. Thus, after a mere 47 seconds, I had grown bored of my partner and allowed him to catch me. Still giggling madly, he grabbed handfuls of shorts and t-shirt to demonstrate that he had, in fact, caught me. He had won.

That is when my adversary’s evil genius began fully to manifest. He realized that this ‘win’ might be the ‘end.’ He DID NOT WANT THIS GAME TO END. So, the six-year-old evil genius pulled the Evil Genius Special: “I’m going to maintain the exact line of motion/trajectory that got this started in the hopes that nothing else in the world will change, and thus I’ll get to keep having my fun as long as I want.” Because things are fun as long as the egocentric decides when they end.

So he let go. And simultaneously jumped a few paces ahead of me, urging me to deke my way around him; he drew me out of my recalcitrance.

I relented. I would have to get around him if I wanted to get home anyway.

But he was still giddy and cackling.

It was contagious. By the end of Act 2, Scene 1, I was re-engrossed. I even added some creativity to my footwork. Each time he outpaced then cornered me, which often happened with a light post or sidewalk-tree wedged between us, I would add a new move to my ‘get around him’ repertoire. First the double jab-step, then the backpedal, then the spin move. We played the game for several minutes, continuing down the long dormitory block.

150 yards down the sidewalk, my naïve self still absorbed and just having concluded that this was the best thing that had happened to me in China, and that maybe I ought to steal this kid and teach him English or at least exchange phone numbers in hopes that we might do it again sometime, the pendulum swung. The next obstacle he thought about putting between us, the next obstacle he wanted to watch me sidle around with some new shimmy, was a bright yellow payphone.

It was arresting. It wasn’t ringing and the boy couldn’t even reach the receiver, but he stood there, petting the metal chord, looking longingly about for his caretaker who could take the receiver off the hook and bring the soothing murmur of the dial tone to the boy’s ear.

The Yellow Payphone.

Game over.

He would no longer chase me. Never again. His caretaker seemed to recognize the potential retrospective importance of me, the first foreigner the boy ever interacted with. I imagine that this recognition was the reason the caretaker implored the boy, several times, to say goodbye.

It was fruitless. Just as I could no longer attract the boy’s attention, the man could not direct it. A person can never control another person. I was chasing now. But he wasn’t playing, so what was I chasing? My own fleeting object of intrigue.

Fleeting objects of intrigue is the subtitle to this project. It could also have been fleeting objects of affection, or points of interest. The idea grew out of what was to be my first post (the piece reproduced above). Because sometimes something draws me in. Sometimes I experience something that I must write about. So that’s where I’m starting. With a recognition that I’m going to write about things that ask that something be written about them.

This is a writer’s blog, operated by Casey Dyson. I hope you explore, enjoy, and share Yellow Payphone with others! Follow along on Instagram @yellowpayphone, Twitter @yellow_payphone, and Facebook so you can learn when new articles post.

Whether reading about music, sports, or other nuances of culture, I hope all appetites are satiated.

The posts will all always be life.

Thank you for reading.