THE B-SIDE: The Pros and Cons of Installing a Ten-Foot Chocolate Fountain in My Front Yard

Lessons Learned!

Inferniti

Today’s guest essayist is Frank Caramillo of Bayside, Queens.
Frank owns Caramillo Used Autos on Francis Lewis Boulevard, where a slight overstock issue has made Karma Reveros extremely priced to move. He presents us with the inaugural piece in our new “Lessons Learned!” series.

I have always had a problem with impulse control. As an example, this past Sunday I knew I had to be up at 7 a.m. for work the next morning. And yet, I started watching Michael Mann’s three-hour masterpiece Heat at 11pm that night.

Or last Thursday, when beers at happy hour turned into whiskeys at 3 a.m. for the “crying-over-my-divorce” leg of the evening. At which point I thought it would be funny to prank call the Uzbekistan Consulate to ask if their country has a Walmart, because I was declaring war on low, low discount prices.

(In my defense, I think I made a solid point: that international peace is a delicate web, and all it takes is one pulled thread to unravel it.)

(Although my defense attorney h…