Proscuitto or Ginger? You decide.

In the past, I had a tendency to assume most people were smarter than me. I think this is due at least in part to being the youngest child in a family of bright people. You know how it goes... Never getting to be the first to do something, you're always compared to the Brainiac and the PhD. And even when you find your own niche, the Brainiac or the PhD decides to dabble a little in the area you thought you'd scoped out for yourself - a completely legitimate thing for the Brainiac and the PhD to do, mind you - and everyone thinks it's absolutely fabulous that the Brainiac and the PhD can be so brilliant and SO well-rounded. Blah blah blah. Meanwhile, the youngest is always assumed to have it SO MUCH easier because it is ASSUMED that the parents are easier on the youngest when in fact, that is not always the case... Waa waa, I know. Life was so hard for me.

Hmmm. I wasn't planning on venting about birth order. My point was going to be that my dear friend Patrice continues to drill into my head that, in fact, I am actually quite bright despite my cluelessness about my own intellect. But whatever. (It is frankly a bit embarrassing that I even need the affirmation this far into adulthood, but I digress.)

The previous paragraph is simply an attempt to qualify the story I'm about to share, of course. It is a preemptive defense because it's Tuesday which means I'm participating in Tova's Totally Awkward Tuesdays. Come to think of it, any Totally Awkward Tuesday post could've/should've carried that qualifying paragraph. Huh. Oh well.

So, it was the first time I had sushi. Well, actually, no. It was the second time I had sushi. No, no, no. It was actually the THIRD time I had sushi.

The first time I had sushi was in LA about 20 years ago and while I find it hard to believe NOW, I didn't like it then. So...

The second time I had sushi was in Chicago about 3 years ago. I was out to lunch with two of my favorite people - Scarecrow and Sandy. Scarecrow (yes, that's my name for her) and Sandy ordered sushi and since my memory was that I didn't like sushi, I ordered some curry dish. I like curry but this particular entree was, well, not very good. (Yeah, I know. I shouldn't have expected a curry dish from a sushi restaurant to be satisfying but whatever.) So Scarecrow and Sandy let me try their sushi. Much to my surprise, I thought it was delicious and expressed remorse about having ordered the dissatisfying curry dish and tried very, very hard not to eat too much of the sushi that Scarecrow and Sandy had ordered.

So, the THIRD time I had sushi, Sandy and I went back to the same restaurant where I had ordered the dissatisfying curry dish. Of course THIS time I ordered sushi. Mmmmm... yummy. Delicious. I thought it was odd that there was a side of prosciutto but whatever. I used my chopsticks and picked up one of the pieces and plopped the whole thing into my mouth.

Now, if I'd taken even a moment to think (a common theme in most of my awkward moments), it probably would've occurred to me that it wouldn't make any sense that there would be prosciutto (an Italian dry-cured ham) as a side for sushi (a Japanese cuisine). But, like I said, I didn't take that moment to think. Instead, I experienced an immediate and overwhelming burst of ginger in my mouth.

Sandy looked at me and smiled. She said, "That's ginger."

I nodded, my mouth stuffed full of previously-perceived-prosciutto-now-fully-understood-to-be-ginger.

She said, "You can spit it out into your napkin if you like."

I did.

We both laughed. Hard. And still laugh about it today, particularly every time we have or even talk about sushi.

In my defense... at the beginning of this post, I included a picture of prosciutto. Here now, I offer a picture of ginger:

Don't they look similar? Well, they sure did to me.