When I was about three years old, my parents decided to take me to a nearby petting zoo. As is the case with most children that age, I was absolutely enthralled with the strange creatures that I had never seen before. There were a herd of relatively domesticated deer that were all gathered in one spot, and I decided to it would be good to get a closer look.
So ice cream cone in hand, I approached the herd of deer and began attempting to communicate with them. It soon became clear that their interests were non-social and rather selfish, as one of them decided that it would take advantage of its superior size and bully me out of my ice cream cone.
Deer 1 / Jiyan 0
That was a traumatizing day for me. I agonized over my emasculating defeat for some time until it dawned on me that I would not be able to progress in my development towards manhood unless I had my revenge.
I hatched a plan and convinced my parents to take me back to the petting zoo several days later. I decided that if they were going to take something of mine, then I would reciprocate and take something of theirs. Unfortunately, deer don’t tend to carry a lot on their persons, so my choices were limited.
Taunting a deer with my conquest
It was an important lesson for me to learn as a young child: it is not the size of the dog in the fight but the fight in the dog. If you are bullied out of your ice cream cone by a larger creature, you need to pick yourself up of the floor and come right back at that bully even if the bully is a domesticated deer and ‘coming back’ means stealing that deer’s pebble-sized droppings.
I was lying in bed last sunday afternoon when I suddenly realized that I had several friends coming over that evening with the expectation of being fed. I began thinking through the work it would take to insure that when they arrived, there would be some sort of food available and became very tired in a short amount of time. It then dawned on me: What are two things that people love in the summer?
#1 - Barbecue
#2 - Not doing anything
Consider this: you are sitting on your couch on a sunday afternoon at 5PM and hunger starts to set in. Suddenly, you hear a jingle from outside that can only mean one thing. You rise from the couch, grab for your wallet, and rush outside. On the street, the intoxicating aroma of burning pork greets your nostrils and you begin to salivate onto your sweat stained t-shirt.
In front of you is parked a thing of beauty:
“Good Day sir,” you utter to the fat man in the driver’s seat, head adorned with a large white bbq-stained chef’s hat.
“Top of the morning,” he responds back with a grin that reveals flecks of ribs embedded between his teeth.
“I will have four ribs, a half-chicken, and two hot dogs,” you respond back to him.
“That will be $32.23,” he fires back while digging in the back of his truck for your order.
Absolute perfection.
Disclaimer: If anyone steals this or any of the other brilliant business ideas I come up with then I expect a 10% ownership stake.
I was having dinner in downtown Bethesda yesterday and found a parking space on Bethesda Row, right across from the restaurant. Unfortunately the meter would only take enough change for 60 minutes so I figured that because I was across the street I would be able to easily feed the meter after an hour or so, or that at least I would see the parking demon if he/she came to ticket me. I was being optimistic: I sat down and became engaged in my meal and by the time I looked down at my watch, 1 hour and fifteen minutes had passed. I popped up to go feed the meter and suddenly found myself face-to-face with the parking demon, who was making his way through Bethesda Row. I rushed to my car only to find that it was too late, I had gotten slammed with a ticket for $35. I thought about trying to say something to the parking demon but those guys are thick as mules so figured I’d just take this one on the chin and blog about it later.
I also thought of a new tactic for dealing with these vultures: one weekend, I’m going to drive down to Bethesda with a bag full of change. I’m going to track one of the parking demons down and then follow them as they make their rounds. I will proceed to preemptively feed every meter where there is a car that is about to get ticketed. After each car I save (and ticket that is avoided) I’m going to stare down the parking lot attendant and make the ’slit throat’ gesture.
It just struck me: AJ is going to kill Tony in the final episode. You heard it here first.
