On many Sunday evenings throughout childhood, my family and I would go to our favorite restaurant on Mott Street in Chinatown. It was called Wo Hop, and—despite being one of those slummy, basement-type joints with pictures of B-list actors adorning the walls and the same elderly Chinese men working year-after-year that you always recognize even though they never seem to recognize you—their food was delicious on a level I can’t properly put into words.

The place was so well-known for its fare that on evenings when the weather was nice, the line would stretch out the door and up the stairs, full of would-be-diners staring in the windows, their eyes telling the actual diners to hurry their fat asses so their own fat asses could experience the food for themselves.

On one such night in middle school, with the line being longer than usual, my dad did his patriarchal duty and volunteered to wait for the family while my mom, brothers and I went off to experience the second best thing Chinatown has to offer besides delicious Chinese food: Cheap Chinese shit.

After a few blocks of plastic remote-controlled swimming frogs, bootleg CDs and VHS movies (I believe we purchased a copy of the epic failure, Romeo Must Die), I found a table of watches. The watches were fake, but the Tommy, Nautica, Polo and Gucci logos on them seemed pretty real to me. So did their $10 price tag to a kid who has no money of his own. Sensing an opportunity to supply bling-like objects to my brand-obsessed 7th grade idiot compatriots, I asked my mother for a $100 loan.

My naïve entrepreneurial spirit won her over, and she allowed me to pick out 10.

When we got home I riffled through boxes of old crap until I found what I hoped would be an ingenious displayer of merchandise: one of those plastic dummy arms kids hang out the trunk of moving cars. I carefully wrapped each of the fake watches around the fake arm and gently placed it in my bag.

The next day, I sold all 10 fake watches for $20 a piece.

The day after that, the Vice Principal suspended me for selling fake watches. 1 day. In school. And I was forced to give everyone their money back.

A week later, every single fake watch stopped working.

I still have them in a box somewhere.

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