A fool's prerogative

Whenever I'm at my Dad's place, I try to run as many errands for him as possible. I have the car. I have the time. And it's certainly not a big deal at all. One of the things that he usually sends me for is rice. Big ol' 20lb bags of rice. And there are usually 2 bags. Most of the time, his wife comes with me. But if there's nothing else to buy, there's really no point. How hard could it be to pick up a couple of bags of rice?

So, right before I leave to meet MS, her mom, TC and PC for dim sum, my Dad's wife hands me money and asks me to buy these bags of rice:
Now, I'm Chinese. That's pretty obvious. But I'm only a little more Chinese than General Tso's Chicken - created by Chinese people, looks Chinese, has a Chinese flavor, but definitely Americanized for public consumption. I speak what I call "Restaurant Chinese," which is enough to order food, pay the bill and generally fool the waitstaff up until the point they ask me a real question. And I certainly don't read Chinese (except for numbers and recognizing my last name).

PC and I are in the store trying to match characters and obviously not making any headway, when MS takes the list from my hand and says we're going to ask someone. Right. Yeah, well, when we asked for help, I realized just how sorry a person I was since I wasn't even close to choosing the correct bags. At least now I will have forever embedded in my memory the type of rice my Dad and his wife prefer. I'm only slightly afraid that next time she's going to give me an entire shopping list in Chinese and say, "Go."

(BTW, did you notice the 11 o'clock dollars? Yeah, me too.)