There is a great Japanese / Chinese restaurant near our office called Sonny Lee’s. Coincidentally, the owner’s name is Sonny Lee. (Many Asian restaurants tend to be named after their owners. My favorite is a Vietnamese pho joint in Las Vegas owned by Kim Long. Pho, the traditional Vietnamese noodle dish, is pronounced “pha,” which I think he should have taken into consideration before naming the place “Pho Kim Long.” But hey – whatever works.)

Anyway, Sonny Lee is a fantastic place, and since both the sushi and Chinese are excellent, I have no problem going there four times per week! Also, Sonny and his staff are very customer service oriented and provide a great, friendly experience. They go out of their way to please a customer. But there is one rule at Sonny Lee’s that can never be broken. I call it “The FS Policy.” You see, they have a great salad there – it’s made of spaghetti-shaped cucumber slices, artificial crab sticks (we have great artificial crabs here in Maryland), avocado slices, spicy Japanese dressing, and other secret ingredients that no one can name. It’s called “Sonny’s Salad,” and goes for about four bucks on the menu. But when you sit at the sushi bar, the sushi chef sticks a free one in front of you before you even order! Wow – now that is a deal.

The thing is, no matter how good of a customer you are, if you sit at a table, you can not get a free salad (FS for short). Sit at the sushi bar and it’s free – sit at a table and it’s four bucks. No one can explain the reason for this, but it is a rule that just can’t be broken.

Now for free food, you just gotta love a good Asian restaurant. They have excellent tea (free), good and greasy fried noodles (free), and a fortune cookie sitting on a scoop of sorbet for dessert (also free). So if you go to Sonny’s and sit at the sushi bar, you can pretty much have a free lunch of an excellent salad, big tasty fried noodles, and sorbet for dessert with all the tea you can drink. Not only is that an incredible deal, it covers most of the food groups – vegetables, protein, grease, sugar, and caffeine. Wow – that’s amazing! I haven’t had the balls to do this, but I often wonder what they would do if after eating the free salad, scarfing down some delicious free noodles with free hot mustard and free duck sauce, and drinking the no charge tea, I said I was finished and was ready for my free dessert. This now brings up another incident of free stuff from long ago.

Many years ago, I was so frustrated with dentistry, insurance companies, and unappreciative patients that I had trouble sleeping through the night. So there I was, watching TV at 4:20 AM when a miracle occurred. Okay, maybe it was an infomercial, but it was so entertaining and mind-blowing I just could not turn it off. You see, there was this dude named Robert Allen, and he had made so many millions buying real estate with no money down that he was willing to do a big favor for the Regular Joe (or in this case, the sleepless Rich). After he showed off his palatial estate, private jet, racing yacht, and several beautiful young women with incredible implants, he told me that life has been so good to him he was willing to reveal his “secret” to real estate riches to all of the schmucks who wanted a better life but weren’t sure what to do.

“Wow,” I thought to my tired self. “This so called ‘secret’ must cost a fortune. And what are the chances that this fancy schmancy Robert Allen dude will be dragging his millionaire ass to a blue collar town like Baltimore?”

Well, as incredible fate would have it, he was not only coming to Baltimore, but to multiple locations here, including the dilapidated Comfort Inn in Pikesville, just six miles from my house! (I was sure that he was staying at The Hyatt down by the harbor and being limo’ed to his daily location.) Okay – so how much is this all gonna cost? (I was mentally prepared to drop a few hundred if necessary – maybe up to a grand.) Well, you will not believe this, but the course was FREE!! This guy is just unbelievable! What he is willing to do to help his brethren!!

So, next Tuesday morning at 8:30 AM sharp I learned that I wasn’t the only person in the Greater Baltimore area who wanted this secret to real estate riches for free. Turns out the place was mobbed with anxious future millionaires. I took a seat near the back – not just because I was embarrassed to be there, but mostly so once Robert revealed his “secret” I could quickly get my butt out of there and immediately begin snatching up these real estate bargains before everyone else.

Imagine my disappointment when I learned that the course was not being given by Robert himself, but by one of his “real estate investment specialists” named Chuck Samuel. (Why do these guys all have two first names?) Oh well, if he is good enough to have Robert call him a specialist he should be good enough for me. He started the show with a video of all the people who have already made millions with his secret. Each and every one of them had a huge house, a great sports car, a boat, and a young wife/girlfriend with tight clothes and a lot of cleavage (except for the female millionaires, who all seemed to have a very attractive full-bred dog fetching something). This was amazing! I sat on the edge of my back row seat with great expectations.

After about two hours of generic information about the real estate market, my man Chuck was ready to reveal the goods – the Holy Grail – the secret to eternal riches! Hey – wait a minute!! It turned out that the “secret” was going to be revealed next week in a special “Closed Door Session” in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, and it would cost a cool three grand for the workbook, tapes, manuals, and one “free” telephone coaching session with a representative from an investment firm that seemed to be sponsoring the whole thing. But hold on here Chuck – I don’t want all that crap – I just want the “secret!” And I can’t make it to Tyson’s Corner next week – hell – I already cancelled a crown, some fillings, and six hygiene patients just to come to the crummy Comfort Inn.

I went home that evening, put on some old Neil Young, popped open a Bud (hey – they were on sale) and started to do some deep thinking. If I were going to improve my practice, my life, and the world in general, it wasn’t going to be easy and it wasn’t going to be free. You can’t get much for nothing, and those who think they can are just left behind dreaming about what could have been. So it took some planning, some work, some time, and some money, but I did manage to get my shit together, and re-learned an old lesson – “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” Except, that is, at the sushi bar at Sonny Lee’s – which is where I’m headed right now. If you’re ever in Reisterstown, Maryland between noon and 1:30 PM, stop in to say hello. Lunch is my treat!