The Second Rat

There’s a guy I work with at the restaurant who is best described as your classic bullshitter.  He hits on girls at his tables, girls at other servers’ tables, well, pretty much any girl that comes into the restaurant.  To my knowledge, he’s got a couple baby-mamas, and yet he somehow gets by with working at the restaurant, where I make just barely enough to take care of myself.  He and I get along pretty well, but I tend not to take anything he says too seriously.  So you can imagine my surprise when I found myself thinking about something he said recently:

“The early bird gets the worm, but the second rat gets the cheese.”

Someone told me that when it comes to critiquing your art the person who is usually full of shit most days can actually be insightful every once in a while.  In the immortal words of Wesley Snipes, “Even the sun shines on a dogs ass some days.”  Well, this doesn’t really have anything to do with art, but it does have to do with a moment of sudden profundity.

We all benefit from other people’s hard work.  Whether it’s the first Filipino immigrants who picked asparagus, carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, sugar cane, or grapes and paved the way for families like mine to follow, or the migrant workers of today who make it possible for my grocery list to stay affordable, I recognize that their situations are often far less than ideal, but the reality is that their hard work has a direct effect on how we maintain our lifestyles.

A while back I found out that I was hired for a job after a friend of mine turned it down.  After the Sloppy Seconds feeling went away, I realized that being the last choice, the right choice, is what’s important, and the rest is just ego. You know how people say one person can make a difference?  Most of the time, we don’t see what we bring to the table, let alone how the things we bring to the table affect the people around us.  But in this case, it paid off.  I happened to have a couple of skills the director didn’t know about in my back pocket that really contributed to the project, so it felt serendipitous that my friend turned it down.

I suppose what I’m saying is that, as cliche as it is, everything happens for a reason.  A little patience and intelligence goes a long way.  We can learn from the mistakes of others if we take the time to really see what’s going on.

At the end of the day you gotta ask yourself:  What is the ultimate goal?  Is the goal to beat everyone else to feed your ego with a moment of satisfaction, or to get the cheese?

Ok, so it just wouldn’t be a Wily Filipino blog post if I didn’t mention something about being cheated on.  So here goes:  I’m fully aware that my heart has led me to be the first rat, and trust me, that big metal bar snapping down on your head sucks balls.  The problem is that I’ve been seeing myself as the rat, and what I need to start doing is see myself as the cheese.  I’m not saying that I ever want to be the other guy.  I just want to be with someone who is aware enough to know that it’s not about stringing me along while she gets something out of her system.  Someone who can resist the urge to rush into things with me when she’s not ready just because I’m “nice.”  Take a second, think, and breathe.  If you really want the cheese, it’ll be worth the wait.

Sometimes winning isn’t everything.  I guess that depends on your definition of “winning.”  If you want to look at it as “second place is the first loser,”  that’s fine.  I’ll be the one with the cheese, and you’ll be dead.