The past is safer to talk about than the future

So we've all been to a Chinese restaurant and had one of those placemats that has the various Chinese symbols for the different years you are born. My very first experience with such a placemat was when I was about 7 years old give or take a few years. My parents, my two sisters, and myself went to a local Chinese restaurant for a nice family meal.

We were all seated and my two older sisters (13 and 18 years old) began looking at the placemat and telling my parents what animal they were and what traits were associated with that animal. I was kind of oblivious to the whole thing because there was a really cool fish tank in the restaurant with all kinds of exotic fish in it. We ordered our food and ate without anything really interesting happening. I remember really liking the Chinese food. My parents took us out to a wide variety of ethnic cuisines, so I had a pretty accepting pallet for a seven year old.

As dinner was wrapping up and I finally noticed the placemat under my plate and began looking it over. I didn't really understand it for the most part so I asked one of my sister's what it was all about. She gave me a short explanation and told me to look and find where my birth year was, 1981. I glanced through the list and found my animal, the rooster, or on this placemat, the cock.

"I'm a cock!!" I exclaimed. The polite discussion my parents were having ceased immediately.

"I'm a cock!!" I said louder this time and with much more enthusiasm. A family next to ours gave a glairing look at my mother and quickly paid and left.

"Look," I said, "It says I'm a cock and I'm not afraid to speak my mind" Both my parents were getting embarrassed, and were trying to make me talk in a quieter voice. "But look, Cock's are boastful and hard working." "I'm a hard working cock, mom" My mom told me that was great, but to be quite and eat my fortune cookie as my dad waved down our waiter. We left the restaurant quickly, all the while I was telling my sisters the cool things about being a cock. They were just smiling wryly at me.

As soon as we got into the car, my mother lost her cool. "Do you know what cock means, " she spit out at me "It means chicken, like the picture," I said "No, she said, "It means PENIS!" She turned around and no one talked the entire car ride home. No one ever spoke of the incident again. To this day, every time I go to a Chinese restaurant and they have those placemats, I tell whoever I'm with that I'm a cock, and then laugh...