Happy Birthday Maya

In this file photo, Mikey strangles Maya at Maverick's

May 23 is Maya’s birthday. She’s 12. I’ve been accused of missing her more than anyone else while here in China. That’s probably not true. I guess it might be true, but if it were I certainly wouldn’t say so on this blog.

The other night while headed to a dumpling dinner our crew came across the Samoyed pictured below. In the universe of Samoyeds I think this one looks more like Maya than most, so it was a nice moment for me to remember her while Tom took pictures and Thiago goaded the dog into barking at all of us. (It must have been a female dog, because Thiago has been getting that reaction from all the girls in China.)

Shijiazhuang's version of the Iditarod

As we were seated at the restaurant my mind wandered. I wonder how Maya’s doing. I miss having her distract me from work by throwing her stuffed Athlete’s Foot toy at me in the office. I hope now that Kristy’s home she’s stopped pooping in the house (let me be clear: “she” refers to Maya in the previous sentence). I thought it would be good to come back to reality in order to specify that we’d like our beer to be served cold when I noticed that Tom was trying to order dog meat dumplings.

“No way, dude.”

“Come on, we have to try things while we’re here!”

“This isn’t a good time.”

“It’s not your dog!”

At that moment an extremely drunk older local sidled up to our table to try and tell us a joke in English. Being a boat racer, my usual reaction when a drunken old dude appears is to pull a chair closer to him because it’s gonna be a good one. But it was clear that Susanna, our Canadian colleague who speaks a bit of Mandarin, was getting uncomfortable. The guy started to insist that she translate the more difficult passages of the joke. As Carlos cleared the Lazy Susan of the beer bottles, I began to scan the room for a restaurant employee who could escort this guy out. But I saw only frightened young waitresses.

Then Tom stood up. “Enough!” he bellowed, but this word must not have been part of the joke because the guy appeared not to have the slightest idea what it meant. An intense stare-off ensued. Tom was staring at the guy, eight of us were staring at Tom, and the guy was not really capable of staring at any one thing at all, so he sort of stood there and swayed before asking Susanna again if she could translate the joke.

Thankfully the man’s friend dragged him away, and we celebrated Tom’s heroism by ordering pigs’ ears. What was served looked like multiple floor plans of an incredibly intricate oval-shaped labyrinth, with cartilage used to indicate the vast majority of passageways and important rooms where treasure might be found. The consensus was that they weren’t that bad.

I think in my family from here on out we’ll leave the pigs’ ears to Maya.

She would gladly eat them