Surfing Ruined My Life

Things have been pretty heavy here on SurfingRuinedMyLife.net as of lately.  Such is life, such is life my friends.  As an appreciation for reading my sad babble of despair and heart ache I though I would reward you with a short funny tale that happened to me this past December while visiting my parents in Florida.  I had been shelving the thing for a special occasion and now I figure is as good a time as any.

In life an advantageous person can find a way to benefit from almost any situation.  This is the story of how thanks to a random act of child abuse I managed to score a free soda on a very hot day.  Whenever I go visit my parents they always have all these fun little activities that we can all do together.  Apparently in South Florida back in the early 1900’s a commune of Japanese farmers bought a large plot of land and set up a Japanese work farm that lasted about thirty years before ultimately like most other communes failing.  One of the guys of the group stuck with it and made a small fortune working the land.

In his will he donated all his land to the county to be turned into a Japanese cultural center of sorts.  Today there is a beautiful collection of different types of Japanese gardens, a heritage museum, a bonsai tree exhibit and much more.  The place is amazing. Its called the  Morikami Gardens and is a must visit if your in the area. Check them out here: http://www.morikami.org.

I was wandering around this incredible place rather awestruck when nature called.  I went looking for a bathroom and as I was approaching it I heard yelling.  Then I see this Asian lady screaming at this little girl after which she proceeded to give the kid a few good whacks on the rump.  Then she pulled a can of orange soda out of the kid’s hand and threw it in the trash all angry.

Initially I was taken back by the whole incident.  Then again who am I to interfere with a persons parenting technique.  I mean its not like she was inflicting real injury on the kid.  Besides I took a few lickings when I got out of line as a kid and it helped make me tough.  Obviously if the mother was inflicting injury upon the girl I would have stepped up and put her down, but that was not what I observed to be the case.   Plus I was really thirsty and the water fountain or dispensers of transmittable diseases as I like to call them was questionable at best.

My inference on the scenario was that the mother put her money in the machine and the little kid pushed the button for orange soda with out having permission to do so thus bringing the onslaught of public child abuse I inadvertently witnessed.  Now I have a pretty good ear when it comes to caned liquids and the sound of that can hitting that garbage pail seemed like it was probably unopened.   As soon as mommy dearest and darling daughter were on their not so merry way I took the opportunity to peer into the trash.

Sure enough that can was full.  I gave a quick look around to make sure no one was watching and then reached in and pulled the can out.  I took it to the bathroom, gave it a wash and whamoo! One free can of orange soda for yours truly.  The funny thing is I was really thirsty too.  That my friends is how I benefited from great techniques in poor parenting.

It was Fanta too!!! They make the best orange soda.