Kung Pao, a Dog, and a Hemi

As some of you may already know, I'm a huge fan of Asian food. Among the many delights this culinary genre offers, there is one king. You know it, I know it, Seinfeld knows it. It's the Kung Pao. I find myself ever craving it, yet seldom do I have the opportunity to indulge. The other day, the longing for spicy chunks of chicken, covered in soy sauce, vinegar, and red peppers simply grew to great to be ignored. Under time constraints, I cut some corners, and ended up in the parking lot of Panda Express. I'm not proud of it, but sometimes a junky's gotta do what a junky's gotta do. Walking towards the door, I was in one of those dazes, brought on by the heat, the hunger inside my belly, and a strangely erotic chicken fantasy. As I went to reach for the door, mere minutes from paydirt, an incredibly loud horn jolted me from my stupor. It was loud and startling enough to bring on the involuntary, "I'm freaked out and going into fight or flight mode" responses, where your primal instincts meet squarely with the social constraints of our society. The equivalent of those rare instances where rain is falling on one side of the street, but not the other, your primal response is immediately followed by the fear and shame that someone saw that primal response (The classic example is tripping over your own feet in public). Once I regained my wits, assuming that some asshole teenager had gotten the best of me, I opened the door and got back to the ritual. I hadn't even looked at the signature Orange Chicken when this unsually loud, and unusually rapid honking shocked me once more. "What the fuck?!" I thought. "What an asshole!". I quickly scanned the parking lot for the perpetrator, knowing that the only comfort in finding him would be the knowledge that I could reinforce one of my many negative stereotypes of certain kinds of people. Would it be a teenager? God I hoped so. Or, perhaps a domineering soccer mom, growing impatient with a husband or child. That would be classic. Maybe it would just be some poor kid who had to pull a minor-MacGuyver just to reach out for help. We've all heard it, "Hot enough to fry a dog's brain." The first four cars parked directly outside the restaurant showed little activity, but the fifth, a massive red pickup truck, was all kinetic energy. It was the flailing winshield wipers that first caught my attention (it was 103 outside), but it was the Boxer jumping up and down on the steering wheel that kept it. "What the hell is going on?", I said under my breath with a chuckle. I was surprised to hear a man at the front of the line respond. "Yeah, last time he locked me out of my truck!". I looked closer. Indeed, this boxer knew what he was doing. He had the horn going non-stop, the wipers going on high speed, and the lights flashing on and off. Was he hungry, lonely, or perhaps just very pissed off at te fact that all these humans thought that "hot enough to fry a dog's brain" spot was funny? Regardless, he was pissed, and he knew exactly what needed to be done. The owner ended up trotting out to the car to restrain the dog before he finished his order. "Who's trained who?", I thought, as I carried my prize out the door.