Friday, April 30, 2010

Talent

You know, I finally figured this out today (Eureka moment!):

I have a habit of intimidating people. I think I must have learned it from boarding school, because, as we all know, in boarding school, as in many other prisons, you just don't fuck around.

But my habit of intimidating is not the type, for example, of the irate guy at the checkin counter who demands to see your manager, or sends the wine back because it's corked, blah blah blah.

No, I have a decidedly subversive manner of intimidating people.

First, I test them. It's always the same. I say or do something that's unexpected.

They're immediately thrown off guard. This is good! This is a GOOD thing! NO ONE expects a customer at the cash register to casually remark "How's your day going? How 'bout them Habs, huh? That Wayne Gretzky! All muscle, no power!"

The poor Philipina has absolutely no clue what I'm talking about, and I don't either, but she looks at me like I just landed from Mars.

This is called immediate respect. Like in Japan, when I go, they really don't expect a foreigner to speak Japanese, let alone speak perfect, casual Japanese at the convenience cash register, offering to pay them in American dollars. They freak! It's great.

Yesterday when I went to my GP, I decided, out of my perverse brain, to fuck with him. "Fentanyl," I said. "Prescribe Fentanyl, please," knowing that Fentanyl is a potentially lethal anesthetic.

"That's what killed Michael Jackson," he says, incredulous. Okay, I've got my jollies! Because I know that it wasn't Fentanyl that killed Michael Jackson, but Profolol!

And then the kicker: when I go into the next room to wait for him to take my blood pressure, he says to Brigitte, apparently, out of my hearing, "That guy is bizarre. Where did you find him?"

This is a GOOD thing! Who wants to be a leopard, with the same spots all all the other leopards? You know, in the same way as a hissing cockroach is fascinating, I like to be distinguished from all the OTHER hissing cockroaches.

But I got in my parting shot with the doc. "How come you haven't found a wife yet, doc?" I said, as I put on my coat.

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