Year of the Rat

We celebrated the Chinese New Year tonight by ordering in Chinese food for dinner. We don't need much of an excuse to order in Chinese food, but one was available and so we jumped. Cathleen had read (or heard on the radio?) that you're supposed to eat dumplings (I forget the reason) and lo mein noodles (for a long life). We threw in some egg rolls too because, well, the Kahn boys like their egg rolls. They are, after all, the perfect vehicle for transporting large quantities of duck sauce to one's mouth.

This Chinese New Year is notable because this year begins the first year of the 12-year animal cycle on the Chinese calendar -- it is the Year of the Rat. As the first year in the cycle, the Rat Year is supposed to be one of renewal, or one in which to make a fresh start in some aspect of your life. Sounds like a plan to me.

I, however, am not a big fan of the Rat. Sure, I always get a little warm feeling whenever I see a giant, inflated rat sitting outside an office building, the centerpiece of some union's protest or picket line. But my affection for anything rat-like pretty much ends there. It is hard to live in a city where there is an estimated rat population in the neighborhood of 60,000 critters and feel any love for them. When I stand on subway platforms and spy a rat crawling around the tracks below, my first instinct is to scout the vicinity for an exit plan for myself should one become necessary. And then there was that episode with the mammoth dead rat in our backyard a few months ago. That still gives me the willies.

Max, in his tender innocence, likes rats. This misguided affection derives solely from watching Ratatouille, a good movie for sure, but a deceptively propagandizing one it turns out. Late one afternoon, as we walked down our block, we passed by the garbage storage area of one of our neighbor's buildings. Much to my horror, a large, hideous rat was sitting there in the open, staring at us, his face rendered that much more repulsive by virtue of the fact that his nose was somehow disfigured or bloody. Max exclaimed, with a note of glee and fascination in his voice, "look, a rat!"

Not, "ahhh, a rat!", but, "look, a rat," much as one might expect a young child to say "look, a koala bear" or "look, its Dora!" I was so stunned by his reaction -- I think I would have been less stunned, and more pleased, had he said "holy shit, a mother fucking rat" -- that I lurched into a lecture on how rats actually are not talented chefs in upscale restaurants, but are repulsive creatures that bite and carry disease. All that he heard, however, was Miss Othmar. A couple of weeks later, when he made some other favorable remark about rats, I concluded that the power of Disney is much greater than the power of Rick.