A Man and His Dim Sum

Much like Brooke Shields and her Calvins, you do not want to get between this man and his dim sum.

Now we've all read of personality changes -- "From gentle lamb to roaring lion" - that kind of thing, but what I saw with my own eyes Friday positively blew me away. A man that I know to be a sophisticate suddenly turned -- right in front of my disbelieving eyes -- into a ravening beast! He'd been his usual urbane self -- until the dim sum began hitting the table.

He began barking "Give me that..." "I'll take some of that..." These were not polite requests. There was a sense of menace thick in the air... A man of accomplishments and grace was suddenly ... He Who Must Be Obeyed.

And it must be said that for a short man he has an uncanny ability to turn into a particularly large octopus. Chopsticks and arms were everywhere!

"Give me some more of that..." The rest of us chatted amiably enough, but his conversation consisted entirely of rapid-fire food orders punctuated with the odd groan of satisfaction. The man was insatiable!

Foolishly, I thought that he would subside as his belly filled. Clearly I had under-estimated that organ's capacity. He had become an eating machine! The servers ran as they fetched more and more carts and rolled them out to us at speed. The table top was crowded with empty pails and the tower of dirty dishes grew higher and higher. Still he ate on, requests now a little muffled as he chewed on yet another shrimp ball, sticky bun...

Finally, finally the feeding frenzy gradually subsided into torpor. A look of glazed sleepiness drifted as gently as moonrise across his face. Sluggishly, he sipped at his tea and looked at the littered table top, much like a general surveys the field for fallen enemy solders. Finding nothing of further interest, he said, "Let's go - I need a nap."

In the sense of fairness that hopefully graces all of my works, and since I've dissed him unmercifully here -- "He" is the noted writer Robert F. Brodsky, PhD, with four books to his credit. These are available at amazon.com:

"On The Cutting Edge (Annals of Engineering)" which covers atomic bomb development, the early guided missile age and space age from his personal point-of-view.

"A Pilgrim Muddles Through (Annals from a Life)" Essays essentially which cover legal windmill tilts, religion, morality, sailing and much, much more.

"The World In a Jug (The Love of New Orleans and Dixieland Jazz)" A purists view of the genre.

Out-of-print for the moment: "Songs My Mother Never Sang To Me" 172 rather risque songs from Cornell, barrooms, fraternity houses, the Navy...