avocado8

Reflexes

Last night we took my parents out for a fabulous meal at one of our favorite restaurants, Goji Tokyo Cuisine. My mom loves food but is not an adventurous eater, so she chose the rather safe shrimp and vegetable tempura. My dad loves to try new things (and return to favorites that he can only get when visiting me in whatever city I happen to be living in), so he branched out a little and chose an avocado-cucumber roll, a shrimp tempura roll, and a pickled vegetable roll. Al had the excellent hog katsu, and I think I had the best meal of all (though everyone else would probably argue the same for their dishes): a Tropical Roll (tuna, mango, avocado, spicy sauce, and three kinds of tobiko) and a Sea Dragon roll (shrimp tempura and avocado topped with spicy kani salad). Outstanding.

When dad's avocado-cucumber roll came out, he asked mom if she'd like to try one. She said no thanks, and then, with a lightning-fast grab for the wasabi, she continued, "I'll just have this." I started to yell, "NO!", but I've lost most of my voice to a cold, and I couldn't intercept her with my hands because they were full of chopsticks and a napkin. My dad's reflexes, however, were even faster than my mom's. He managed to block her arm as she was moving to stuff the wad of wasabi into her mouth, and it went flying. Mom looked stunned, as I'm sure we all did. "DON'T EAT THAT!" my dad said sharply. And then, as my mom continued to look confused, he said, "What did you do with it???"

At this point I was laughing too hard to tell them where it was, so I just moved my plate aside so they could see it. I'd watched it come at me, so I'd seen where it landed. Al scooped it up and put it back on the plate, and dad apologized for whacking mom's arm while explaining that the move was designed to save her considerable pain and shock.

We all had a good laugh over it, especially me—because I'm convinced that this story will now supersede the one that my parents have been telling for years, about the time I stuffed the nose of my IHOP Funny Face pancake into my mouth, thinking it was ice cream. For mom's part, she made the same mistake the Beaner once did: she thought the wasabi was an extra lump of avocado.