The Pang Sai Manuever

As I turned it over and over again in my mind, it finally came to me. The word I was searching for when Mark said banzai manuever was pang sai (/bəNG' sī/). Yes indeed, pang sai.

Allow me to tell you about a lesser known strategy called the Pang Sai maneuver.

On a fine day a few years ago, Katherine and I were walking through a shopping mall. There was some commotion up the way. Someone was yelling something or other at another. I couldn't quite make out what was being said. As we got closer, I discovered that it was actually an Asian couple shouting in a Chinese dialect across an open atrium. Anyway, the white noise from shoppers and a nearby water fountain washed out their voices. They were failing to communicate.

Suddenly, in one of those rare moments when everything that produces noise -- the shuffling of feet, the fountain's watery splashes, even the pesky Mediterranean women pushing their wrinkle creams upon unwary customers -- all those noises ceased abruptly. You could hear a pin drop. It was at that precise moment that the Asian male flipped from all-Chinese to an English-Hokkien Pidgin slang:

"I NEED TO PANG SAI," he yelled.

His voiced gushed clearly across the open atrium, crashing through the sun-glasses huts and poster kiosks, around the Gaps and Banana Republics, rippling past the coffee shops and through the food court before washing out at the bookend stores: Sears, Penny's and Dillard's.

In all, just a fleeting moment before the oblivious shoppers began milling about once more.

Meanwhile, Katherine's squeezing my arm. I looked to find that she's besides herself, shaking to suppress laughter.

"What?" I ask

She can't speak. She sits on a bench, trembling.

"What?" I repeat impatiently.

After several minutes, she pulls herself together to inform me that to pang sai is Hokkien slang for going #2.

"You mean to tell me that our man just yelled across the mall that he needs to take a shit, and nobody but his wife and you understood him?"

New waves of giggles cascaded over her.

--//--

Banzai Manuever? Pang Sai Manuever? Execute both well, and you may reap high rewards.

Executed poorly? You might be in the pits for awhile.

There. I feel better now. Happy Friday.