The Wasabi Incident

I was introduced to Japanese food when I was in my late teens.

I can’t really recall much of the dinner itself, especially since I didn’t then, and still don’t eat fish. But I do remember that I was shocked to find out that Japanese food consisted almost exclusively of disgusting, slimy, raw fish. However, my friends were greatly amused by the facial expressions I made each time I was offered a piece to taste and kept forcing piece after disgusting piece upon me. Usually preceded by the words, “Oh, but you’ll really like this one!”

This was most likely followed by the explosive ejection of the offered piece of stinky food across the table.

The only saving grace for me was my introduction to the wonderful, amazingly spicy, green ‘mustard’ that sat in a small ceramic bowl on the table. This green stuff, whose name I couldn’t say properly for the life of me, was the spiciest thing I had eaten since my aunt’s special tacos, and I loved it. In fact, the waiters needed to refill the egg sized lump of wasabi twice during the meal.

I paid dearly for the amount of wasabi I ate that night the next day, but damn it was worth it.

Anywaste, we were done with the meal and we were going to start on dessert. My best female friend at the time, who we will call Shaggy for no reason at all, was sitting to my immediate right. Seeing my look of utter confusion at the choices on the menu, she offered to order her favorite dessert and let me taste it. I agreed, she ordered something called ‘Green Tea Ice Cream’ and when the cold, green lump arrived, I tasted it.

I can only imagine that if I were to lick the sweaty, hairy, frozen balls of the Abominable Snowman, it would taste exactly like Green Tea Ice Cream.

Shrugging, Shaggy went back to enjoying her ice cream for a few minutes while I entertained my friends by explaining in great detail why raw fish on wads of rice shaped like slugs shouldn’t be considered a meal. Especially at the outrageous prices we were paying by my poor-college-student standards. Everyone was laughing and enjoying themselves, nothing wrong, nothing amiss.

Nothing that is, until Shaggy made The Mistake.

There we all were, sitting at the table, eating, laughing and drinking, when she turned to me discreetly and told me she needed to visit the ladies room. She then excused herself, left the table and made her way to the back of the restaurant where the restrooms were located.

Leaving behind her bowl of ice cream.

I sat there for a few moments, just staring at that bowl with a devilish smile upon my face, until I realized that my friends had all gone silent. Looking up, I found they were all staring at me with puzzled expressions on their faces, probably wondering what was so fascinating about Shaggy’s half eaten bowl of ice cream. Looking around to make sure Shaggy was nowhere in sight, I made a casual observation to my assembled friends.

“Green Tea Ice Cream,” I said in a soft voice, “looks a lot like wasabi.”

When Shaggy returned to her seat a few minutes later, she didn’t notice how quiet the table was and immediately proceeded to eat her melting ice cream. Keep in mind that no one at the table even attempted to warn her. Lifting her spoon, she found that it had a very, very large scoop of what appeared to be Green Tea Ice Cream on it, and she happily opened her mouth and shoved the entire thing inside. As soon as the spoon left her mouth she realized what had happened and her eyes went wide and began to water as her face became so red I thought she would burst into flame.

It was the perfect practical joke.

By all rights, I should have died that night. I should have been a victim of a frontal lobotomy by a spoonful of wasabi shoved up my nose and into my brain, but somehow I survived. Shaggy didn’t get angry, she didn’t even get upset. In fact, as soon as she had recovered from her initial shock, she turned to face me and somehow managed to swallow before calmly taking a drink of water.

“Damn.” She said, as she continued to eat her ice cream.

“That was perfect.”