Dack Hunting

She’s about to have another little brother any minute. We’re all a little stressed out. Of course, if I say that out loud, The Wife sarcastically tells me I have it hard, then tries to hit me. Luckily she can’t waddle that quickly.

Found by my dad in JapanTown – no, “Dack” is not its name. It’s a DUCK.

NO ONE is more Mangled than our friend Midkby Mouse. Seriously, I’ve seen this guy’s name written a hundred different ways. You think Disney’s Gestapo will spare you, Dyslexic Chinese Pirates?

I’m constantly amazed at how blunt Chinese culture can be. Our Western beating-around-the-bush can frustrate my Chinese family to no end, too. This girl, a friend of wife’s friend, mailed my wife her picture. She then called every few days asking if we had any eligible male friends. And by eligible, she meant “single and prepared to marry.” I know this behavior exists everywhere – after all Chinese aren’t a different SPECIES. With them, though, it’s just all laid out on the table. Being Western, I was too polite to suggest she tear up her Old Navy credit card and find a different hairdresser.

From a school notebook. Man this sounds familiar…

so does this… another notebook, more song lyrics.

“Me and Warren G had to Collabolate.”

Wow, it’s like you can see into my very souler.

From the Foshan newspaper article about my wife and I. I guess it’s obvious it’s about me. Plus, there’s some awesome manglish on the right. The article says something about my wife being modest, and I ostensibly replied, “No, Beauty.” Instead of, “No, you’re beautiful.” is this only interesting to me? Probably.

I remembered Chuck E. Cheese from my own childhood as an exciting haven of games, pizza, and robotic mammals. When I hit puberty, my cousin and I would pillage the dumpster for tickets, take them inside, redeem for food and trinkets, rinse, repeat. Good times. Then it became the most hilarious Chinese Restaurant in the world. They didn’t even remove the robots or change any decor! I guess every year-of-the-rat, they looked like geniuses… Anyway, that was in Alaska many moons ago. Recently, I took my kids to see Sir Charles and I actually felt like a friend had died. Or at least come down with a debilitating drug addiction. This place is PATHETIC now. The games are weak, the pizza is like prison food, and the most exciting thing that happened for any of us went down like this:

Okay, so I’m kinda dumb, as my wife likes to point out. I remembered Chuck E. Cheese being expensive back in the day, and the games being compelling, right? I bought a TON of tokens. Waaaaaaay too many. Like $20 worth. Laugh it up. Like I said, the games were so weak, it’s impossible to even use those tokens. So Wife yelled at me until our fun was threatened. I asked the staff for a refund. No can do.

I recognized the assistant manager. “Hey didn’t you used to run the Safeway on Potrero?” “Yeah, hey how are you?” “Good – can you help me out here?” “Sorry – this machine doesn’t give receipts.” Now insert the most uncomfortable silence between semi-acquaintances of all time. We were both embarrassed to be there, and neither of us came out of that transaction emotionally unscathed.

Wife wasn’t happy, our kids were bored silly, mouth breathers were running around screaming, and I had about ten pounds of unused tokens in a cup. I couldn’t care less about the $20 – it was the MISTAKE that dug at me. I knew I’d never live it down. So I actually followed the staff’s advice and SOLD our tokens to an incoming family. For some reason, very hard for me to do. But I did, then picked up my soiled dignity and soiled kids and got the hell out of there. NEVER to return. Up yours, Chuck!