Breaking the Rules

For those who know me well, you will know that I have certain rules, a code that I live by. My people find these rules to be asinine, that’s o.k. they aren’t rules for others, they’re rules for me. For example, I know it has become more popular to play Christmas music before Thanksgiving. Heck, Costco has Christmas decorations up right now! Well, one of my rules is no Christmas music before Thanksgiving dinner. It’s just good time people. Another one is, I don’t eat salads. It’s true, I don’t mean to be picky, I eat other vegetables, its just salads, not so appealing to me. Well, as I was staying in a hotel in Morocco I went to the restaurant for a late lunch. I already felt bad because almost no one speaks English, although one waiter did, so he served me. What’s the first thing he brings out? Cabbage, carrots, and beets, in shoe strings with dressing on them. Yup, a salad. I knew I couldn’t not eat some, I didn’t want to be that guy in a foreign country. I’d be lying if I said I finished it, I didn’t. But I put a dent in it. That’s huge for me, all the while washing it down with as much Coke as I could. While in the dinning hall, what do you think they were playing? If you guessed anything but Christmas music, you’d be wrong. It was smooth jazz Christmas. Which is actually kind of funny because it’s Ramadan right now, the Muslim holy month. Nevertheless music of Christ’s birth was being played in the hotel. There’s nothing I could do about that either, oh well, but towards the end of my meal, "I’ll be home for Christmas" came on. Now, I didn’t cry or anything like that, but I sat there and thought about how for the next two Christmas’s I won’t be home. I always liked that song, especially in college, when I was stressed with finals, and excited to get home and see all my family, sleep in my bed, be in Washington. I have a feeling these aren’t the only two of Ben Steel’s rules that might get broken at some point over the next 18 months if 2 have been broken in just over a day