Intelligent Deer and Selecting Food

Date: 8/1/2016

I have a pet deer. I think it is incredibly intelligent, as it appears to understand what I am saying to it and can reply back (in English). I am with a friend and while the deer nibbles on a sweater(?), I joke, "no, you don't want to do that to the sweater you made, you spent a long time on it." Now the deer leaves it alone and chastises us for not being careful with it. "I spent a long time on that," it says. "I worked really hard." I didn't expect the deer to take me seriously, and now I'm trying to undo my last statement, explaining that it doesn't make any sense for this sweater to be made by a deer, and does the deer have any memory of making it? While this all happens, the deer is cuddling on both of our laps, and I am in awe at how smart it is. Joey's uncle(?) comes to visit us, and we are trying to decide on a place to eat. We are driving around looking and finally I blurt out that it will need to be either ethnic or - he finishes my sentence - a vegan pizza place. Well, not even a vegan pizza place necessarily, I say to him, just a place with vegan cheese. He drives onto the sidewalk and it takes us a moment to realize what he's doing. I shout for him to get back to the road, and he does, narrowly missing pedestrians on the sidewalk. I need to pee. We stop in an Asian restaurant so I can use the bathroom. When I get out, Joey is ordering food to go. Like a buffet style, he is able to pick and choose a little bit of everything and get it all in one container. I see he has some golden tofu with sesame seeds on it, some steamed dumplings, vegetables, and soup so far. It looks really good but I am INCREDIBLY annoyed. "I thought you weren't that hungry since you just ate," I say to him. He says something about how he'll save most of it for later, and how he wasn't hungry before but is now. While the cashier rings him up, I storm out of the restaurant. This is so STUPID, I think. We could have just eaten here. But he's already got his food all packed up to go and made that decision without me while I was in the bathroom. Now his uncle and I will be stuck driving around forever, and at the end of the day I'm going to be stuck with shitty side dishes because his uncle will want to go to a typical pizza or burger joint. Part of my frustration comes from knowing his uncle doesn't want to eat there, but I do - and so Joey should also have to "suffer" with me / turn down the thing we want for the sake of the group. But now it is just me doing that. His uncle comes outside, but he is a very elderly man now. He asks if he should pull the car around. I tell him yes, but that I'm walking down the block so he can just pick me up there. Joey has a long commute to work, but the very end involves crossing a body of water. If he doesn't get out of work by a certain time, he might miss the last ferry across, in which case he'll have to spend the night at the office. There are two buildings very close together with water between them, and we are sitting on a floaty. There is a small, tiny, blow up motor boat near us, suitable for one crouched down person. I suggest Joey uses that to cross if he ever stays too late, noting that he should just push it back across when he's done with it, and the owner will never be the wiser. I am asking Jason about the deer, and if deer are really that intelligent - more intelligent than other domesticated animals. He doesn't appear to understand what I'm asking. "Did the deer really understand English and what we were saying to it? Are other animals actually fluent in English?" He says there is a theory that every deer today has a concussion because of humans and our road system - it has confused the deers' inner nature and cause them to loose much of their intelligence. As we drive I see a deer run across the road, and I brace for the impact, expecting us to hit it, but it makes it across in time. "Please don't hit a deer after all of this," I tell Joey, who is driving. I am at a cafeteria-like buffet with Margaret and one other person. She is explaining that she often eats for free just by filling up her tray, walking over to the cash register, standing near there for a few seconds, and then walking out. Her and the other girl fill up their trays and we give it a try. It appears that the cafeteria workers aren't paying attention to what happens at the cash register and vice versa. It works. We walk out quickly, smiling and giggling, but I worry that three people may be too obvious whereas one person is not. We get through the doors.