The Year of The Rat

by Elaine Ferrell

The aroma of soy sauce and fry oil tickled my nostrils as I absorbed the familiar surroundings: the hexagonal lanterns with dangling red tassels above each table; the silk tapestries on the lime green walls displaying landscapes of young dogs and old women; the tactile image of the golden lion above the bar. 

            We were greeted by a small balding man in pants too long for his legs. He bowed and beckoned us to follow him as he shuffled to a table set with a white tablecloth and four place settings, each with a bright red napkin. At the centerpiece of the place setting was my favorite part of the visual milieu - a paper placemat that tells me who I am.

            People born in the Year of the Rat are ambitious and work hard to achieve their goals. Rat people are also charming, talkative and easily make friends.

            I agreed with its assessment for the most part. 

            At ten years old, I loved this restaurant because I could gorge on greasy noodles and vegetables so fried they were undetectable, but also because there was reading material right in front of me.

            I spent most of my time on the description of the Rat. I noticed its lack of an Oxford comma, something my mother told me to use for clarity. The placemat does say that the Rat is detail-oriented. 

            I abhorred that my birth year was dubbed the year of the Rat. Why couldn’t I be a Horse like my mom, or a Tiger like my brother? These creatures were majestic and noble. I would even prefer my dad’s animal, the Dog - playful and loving - to the vile and loathed Rat. As I read the words on this sagacious placemat, I tried to ignore the picture underneath it - a pencil drawing outlining the rat’s creepy prehensile tail, its pointy snout, its obtrusive ears.

            Nevertheless, I thought the Rat traits described me best of all twelve of the zodiac: likeable, optimistic, and stubborn. In each visit to this restaurant, I zeroed in on one word in particular - for Rats are focused - Ambitious. I wanted to understand more about this word.

            The placemat differentiated between the positive Rat traits (imaginative) and the negative ones (stingy). Ambitious was designated to the negative side. I didn’t fully understand why. Even at ten, I had defined myself as ambitious. Ambitious people were successful, right? My stubbornness and my stinginess - yes, those were unshakably negative. Why did ambition have to be, too?

            At least once in our many sojourns to this restaurant, I asked my mom this question. I didn’t yet understand the nuances of how a word could be both negative and positive. She explained that people can be blinded by ambition; they can be so ambitious they do whatever it takes to reach their goal, even if that means hurting other people. 

            “So why is it good?” I pressed.

            “Ambition vaults people forward. If no one had ambition, nothing would get done. We wouldn’t invent things, or make discoveries, or seek to become better.” 

            “It sounds more good than bad,” I responded.

            My mom nodded. “I think so.”

            “So why does the placemat say it’s bad?” I asked.

            She thought for a moment. “Maybe they mean it as a warning. Maybe if you are aware of your ambition, you can temper it from getting out of control.”

I was not convinced. “I guess,” I answered petulantly, then started looking around

for our appetizers to arrive.

            Rats are impatient.

****

 

        From the moment I learned how to form letters, I craved to describe myself, my surroundings, my experiences. It was a chance to use words, words, words. I wanted them to drip trippingly on my tongue. (Shakespeare was a Rat!)

            As a second grader, I would have used words like precocious, inquisitive, industrious to describe myself. I couldn’t spell the word friends, but I had the vocabulary of a fifth grader. I devoured books several grades above my grade level and lapped up my parents’ conversations like a thirsty dog. Books, language - they were my fuel.

            Learning how to read sparked the fire, and acrostic poems made it burn. These poems were one of our first assignments every year between second and sixth grade. The assignment required the use of one self-descriptive for every letter in our name. One boy in my class, Interesting Awesome Neato Ian, got off easily (and lazily), though I didn’t envy Thanjina.

            I basked in the new words I could now use to describe myself, brazen with my vocabulary options, changing it up every year: Energetic, Eager, Exuberant. Logical, Levelheaded, Lyrical. Introverted, Intriguing. Neighborly, Naive.

            Each year, I struggled with the A. Right there in the middle. I was neither athletic nor artistic, and it was important to me to be genuine, to tell the truth about myself. (Authentic, you could say.) While Ian just wanted to be done, Awesome was a lazy word to me, even at eight years old. If I used Energetic or Lively I didn’t want to repeat myself with Active, and I did not consider myself Adorable. That left Ambitious. I still wasn’t entirely sure of its meaning. I knew it had something to do with pursuing your goals, which was an accurate description. So year after year, I went with it, for lack of a better idea.

            The word Ambitious sat there year to year, sandwiched between Loving and Idealistic, telling everyone who walked by my cubby how I viewed myself.

            It was satisfying to delicately untape this endeavor from my cubby when we made room for another project. I would gingerly place it in my take-home folder so as not to bend it, and trot up to the refrigerator at home to festoon it with magnets.

            In fifth grade, I was the cream of the crop - the oldest grade! I felt like a queen.

            We had lockers! Bright red and metal. The acrostic poem once again showed a whole new world of people who I was. I blazoned it - with large, colorful letters you could read from down the hall - in the center of my locker, which I fervently decorated with platitudinal magnets and Polaroids of friends. The acrostic poem did not come down until the spring.

            Rats are prideful.

 ****

 

        Toward the end of fifth grade, I was excited to participate in what our teacher called “Superlatives.” He gave us a worksheet with a list of traits - Most Athletic, Funniest, Best Student - asking us to fill in the blanks with classmates’ names. Most students requested specific traits for themselves; my friend Heather and I were no exceptions. She wanted Silliest. I really wanted Best Writer. I asked everyone in the class to please assign me to best writer, and other classmates made similar requests that I obliged, since no other students had asked for what I wanted.

            Our teacher collected the worksheets then sent us off to lunch and recess. The class anxiously awaited the results as we shuffled in, our bellies full and our legs tired. We silently regarded the room, wondering to ourselves: Will Lauren get Nicest? Will Matthew get Best Rapper?

            Mr. Ripley read out the superlatives one by one. Each was accompanied by a certificate, which that student would come up to the front of the room to get. We all clapped politely for each recipient.

            It was Heather’s turn. Mr. Ripley grabbed her certificate and said: “Heather… Best... reader!” Heather was stunned. Amidst the clapping and what sounded like genuine congratulatory remarks, she trod up to Mr. Ripley and begrudgingly took her certificate. She slumped back down into her chair next to me and whispered, “Ugh, that’s so boring!”

            “But it’s true!” I told her. “You can read like 10 pages in a minute! That’s so cool!”

            Soon it was my turn. Best writer hasn’t been taken yet! I thought to myself. My chances were good. Then Mr. Ripley called my name. This was it!

            “Best Ideas!” he exclaimed.

            Like Heather, I trudged to the front of the room to take my unwanted certificate. Everyone clapped politely.

            Heather knew it wasn’t what I wanted either. “Hey, that’s cool,” she said. “You can’t be a good writer without good ideas.”

            “I guess,” I replied, my voice dripping with chagrin.

            The Best Writer award was the second to last one given out. It went to Rachel - she was good at sports and had a lot of friends. So why couldn’t she get most popular, or most athletic, or most anything else? I had never seen her writing. I had never heard her request Best Writer. Why did everyone pick her? I was agitated.

            Was this the hated ambition for which Rats were so famous?

 ****

 

        By sixth grade, I didn’t like school much; I didn’t have any friends at the neighborhood school, as all my friends from fifth grade had gone to the magnet program on the other side of the county. The school admission was by lottery, so it was purely bad luck that I had not gotten in. The students at my school were already so enmeshed in their own social circles from their previous elementary schools. They weren’t interested in including anyone else, especially thinks-she’s-smarter-than-everyone-else, nerdy, ambitious little me. 

            So I kept to myself and focused on my classes, even though I found most of them boring. The exception was English. I was placed in the advanced track English class, where the reading was challenging and the writing assignments were interesting. I remember Ms. Rodriguez asking us to guess in class about what the “game” was in “The Most Dangerous Game” after reading halfway through the short story. I was appalled when I did not guess correctly - my ambition, perhaps, clouding my ability to enjoy the symbolism. It should really have been dinosaurs, I argued in my head after the story concluded. 

            Also by sixth grade, my desire to be a writer had cemented. At one point, there was a short story competition at the middle school. Of course, I competed. The evening it was announced, I sat down at my desk and started spilling out words onto paper. I drew arrows to rearrange sentences, crossed out full paragraphs, wrote notes in the margins in different colors.

            The next morning, I asked my mom if I could borrow her typewriter, and she happily obliged. I savored the chunk-cha-chunk the big keys made, but quickly grew impatient - that Rat creeping up again - with how long it took me to type out all the words. I hated typing class, and this was worse because I couldn’t erase anything. I was not allowed to use mom’s computer. But I was determined to turn in a clean printed draft. So I persevered.

            My persistence paid off. I won first place for the grade! I beamed all weekend when I found out; it was all I could talk about.

            The next step was to read the story aloud for the adult judges, who would then decide the winner for the whole school. This person would go on to the county level, followed by the state level, and finally the national level. I practiced in front of the mirror every day, focusing on my eye contact and my diction. 

            When the day to read aloud came, I put on my favorite dress, navy with yellow flowers and a white sash around the waist. I proudly read my story, ensuring that I pronounced every syllable clearly and scanned each judge equally, but not for so long that I appeared creepy. My story was about a girl who struggled in her math class, and I assumed it would win since the theme was so universal, so relatable. I used short, declarative sentences, like Hemingway, and sprinkled in humor, like Twain. There was exposition, a climax, and a denouement. I didn’t know what the Aristotelian unities were then, but any English major would have told me they were there. And I’d done it all in four pages. I was assured I would win.

            But later that week, I discovered that I’d only won third place. Despite being just twelve and competing against fourteen-year-olds, I was astonished that I had not been able to continue to the county-wide level. For the next several weeks, the winning stories (including mine) were displayed behind glass in the school hallway next to all the trophies the school had won at sports events and academic competitions. 

For the next month I trudged down that long, cold, beige hallway, getting bumped hither and to by oblivious teenagers, staring at my failure. Each story brandished their resulting ribbons, and I was forced to pass by mine each day, its taunting yellow ribbon everywhere in my periphery. 

I’d heard the first and second place stories read aloud and didn’t understand why they had won. What did these stories have that mine didn’t? I was aggrieved.

            When they replaced the stories with something else, mine was mailed back to me. I shoved it along with its ugly yellow ribbon into a closet. 

I did not revisit that story, did not strive to make it better, did not attempt to write it in a different way.

            As an adult now, I reflect on this incident thinking that in that moment, I had failed as a writer. The process of writing includes reimagining, revisioning, renewal. As a child, I could not see it that way. Was it the Rat and its ambition that blinded me from this knowledge?

 ****

 

            I am not making the same mistake with this piece. I now embrace the circular nature of writing. I savor the editing process; I appreciate the fact that I can always make something better, something different. Is this really the best this piece can be?

            And I still don’t know if I consider myself ambitious. A few years ago, my supervisor left and I was up for her position, though I had no desire to apply. I didn’t want the added responsibility, as juggling my already-heavy workload and my family obligations were enough. Does this mean I didn’t want to advance my career? Maybe.

Ambition is usually portrayed negatively on television, especially when a woman is perceived as ambitious. Ambition in movies involves doing whatever it takes to get what you want, including walking over others. Villains are always ambitious. Mark Twain stated, “Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions.” He was successful, and probably did not push others down to become so (but then again, who knows). And on the flip side, Napoleon – not exactly a man to emulate – said, “Great ambition is the passion of great character.” I guess it all depends on what you want to do.

            For the most part, I don’t see ambition as negative, viewing my mom as an example. A successful attorney in her own right, she worked her way up to partner before starting her own firm. She didn’t push anyone down to get where she was. She worked hard for both herself and her clients.

I consider myself ambitious with my own writing. By its nature, writing is an individual task. I’m not hurting anyone by striving to be a successful writer. Thus, how can my ambition be negative when it does not affect others?  

            As my husband prepares fried rice in the kitchen, the fragrant scent of soy sauce wafts into my nose, sparking the memory of the rat on that placemat all those years ago. I want to reread it now with the experience and wisdom of an adult. I desire to recreate those traits - all of them - so I can wrest myself from all the bad ones and embrace the good ones. 

When I wrote that story, I was egotistical, livid, ambitious, and maybe I still am. But I am also adaptable, adept, astute. Yet I am also – just like everyone else – merely a creature at the mercy of the world, like the Ox, the Dragon, the Rat.


Elaine Ferrell lives in Silver Spring, MD where she works in non-profit communications. When not writing, Elaine enjoys baking and spending time outdoors. She has been published in Motherly, ellipsis literature & art, Months to Years, Soliloquies Anthology (Canada), Santa Clara Review, and others.