May 11th, 2008

"What's in a name?"
-Shakespeare

I worked at Cherry Blossom, Top100 Chinese Restaurant in the USA for Mother's Day this past weekend. It was quite busy, as it historically is on all Mother's Days. At around 8:00 business died down. I ordered a plate of Triple Delight. That's poultry, steak, and giant South-Pacific seawater prawns stir-fried in a delicious chef's specialty sauce sauteed Shichuan style. After I consumed this most delicious meal with a steamy side of white rice and Chinese mustard packets, I ate apple slices. While I was eating said slices of apple, I saw something so frightening at the time that it made me jump, just a little.

There I sat at a table, facing the entrance to the store. As the heavy winds blew against the trees outside, I thought about the recent tornadoes that have hit so close to home. I wondered what it would be like to see a tornado in real life. I wondered whether I could ride a tornado like a rodeo bull all the way to the top, then be thrown out to the outer banks where the rodeo clown and I would land safely on the sunny, sandy beach. Where thereafter we would make sweet, passionate love on the beach. And of course the rodeo clown is a hot female underneath all that ridiculous getup, much to my surprise.

I sat fantasizing with my legs crossed, left over right, as real men often do. I wore a pair of Rainbow Sandals, as all who consider themselves real men also do. I shook my feet; it's something I personally do, and something only a manly man can do.

That's when I caught something moving under the table. It was so shocking that it made me jump a little--just a little. I cannot stress that fact enough. It was only a minor jump.  It's similar to the feeling you get when someone sneaks up behind you and you don't know they're there, but they are, and by the time you realize they're there, you've already jumped like a coward. What you're scared of you don't really know. It's a surprise, and life is full of surprises, however insignificant it may be. This was one of those insignificant moments, something I'll probably forget by tomorrow.

So here's what happened. I looked under the table and it scared the shit out of me for a split second. Only a split second! It was the heel flap of my flip-flop. I caught sight of it and I jumped a little. My leg was crossed in just the right angle where I my eyes would catch the flap as my feet shook up and down. My reaction was, "OMG what the fuck is that?! Oh, it's only the flap of my flip-flop." The flap was moving due to my shaking leg. Obviously to no fault of my own as it is part of the human autonomic nervous system, akin to breathing or beating of hearts. I looked around to make sure no one saw what happened. The restaurant was empty and my dad was busy with restaurant stuff behind the counter. Good, I thought, no one would ever know.

On the surface of things, it would appear that I'm a spineless coward simply because I jumped at the sight of my flip flop, but you weren't there. No outsiders can really judge this situation from their eyes. They may not even be able to do so looking at it through my eyes. But unless you're me looking a the situation through my eyes, you can't possibly understand. Nobody understands me. I faced it on my own, by myself, in Cherry Blossom, while eating apple slices nonetheless! I nearly dropped that shit--but I didn't! That's more than I can say for anyone else. I'm sure there's a scientific study that would back me up on this, but I've got more pertinent things to allot my time with than to explain to people why I'm not a coward.

I do want to iterate something. I'm no coward. In fact, I can state at least an instance or two where my bravery was tried, and undoubtedly triumphed over my fears, instances where I stared fear straight in the eyes and chose not to run away. Instead I slowly backpedaled away in an unobtrusive manner, while maintaining my intense glare at Fear. In fact! There might have even been a look of Fear in Fear's eyes itself! Now that I think about it, I'm almost certain there was.

But enough about some insignificant event of my boring life. We oughtn't dwell on the past. What's done is done. Let's move on. The sun rises everyday, and the road ahead and all that jazz.

---
On another note, the night previous I had a dream. I can't recall specifics of content but I do remember one crucial detail. The infamous Tony Lee said something to me in the dream that made me so angry I wanted to sock him in the jaw. I can't recall precisely what he said, but I can tell you something about how it affected my emotional state--had Tony Lee been present in the room when I awoke, I would've uppercutted him in the gut... The nerves of that guy, pissing me off like that not only in real life, but in my dream!...the son of a bitch...