Attack of the Killer Sushi

Three things happened because we decided to eat at the Chinese buffet for dinner tonight.

1. My sister's baby's daddy proved that he is an unimaginable asshole.
2. I finally conquered my fear and tried a piece of sushi.
3. The waitress asked if my mother was a senior citizen. She's 48.

I have gone into that buffet at least ten times in the past six months, and every time I go, I go over to the place where they have the sushi, and I stare at it. I stare at the weird little rice and seaweed monsters. I stare, and I stare, and I stare, and then I always chicken out and go back to my seat sushi-less. It's the idea of biting into that mess in the middle that bothers me. I have a thing about texture. I pick up the sushi, and it feels so weird and spongy, and the idea of putting that into my mouth is just too much. The idea of my front teeth biting into that mess is just too big a hurdle to jump over. I reasoned that if I could get the whole thing into my extraordinarily huge gob all at once, I might be able to manage, but since I have never found a piece small enough for that, I was safe.

This time, I went up to that little sushi tray, and I stared at the seaweed wrapped kind, and it stared back at me with it's weird green and yellow stuff in the middle, mocking me with it's perfectly round shape, and I said, "Today is the day, seaweed thing!" I picked that spongy thing up and put it on my plate, and then I practically RAN back to the table. I announced my triumph. I had never successfully gotten a piece onto my plate, and there it was! VICTORY!

The only problem now that it was on my plate was that it was obviously too big to be eaten in one bite. I managed to get rid of some of the rice and seaweed to mold it into a more bite-sized piece, trying so hard not to look at what was in the middle of this monstrosity. The seaweed and rice didn't really taste so bad. It really didn't taste like anything. So far, so good. That was until I put that thing into my mouth and started to chew.

It crunched, and my mouth was instantly on fire.

I have no idea what was in it, but I chewed and swallowed what I could, but it was just too much. I had to spit out what I couldn't choke down. The taste really wasn't so bad. It really didn't have a taste except, of course, of the taste of the volcanic, nuclear, lava from the bowels of Hell THING that crunched in the middle. The problem was that as soon as I crunched on that little piece of the things nightmares are made of, it felt like somebody had put a bullet into my forehead.

Then my lips started to go numb.

Then I was deliriously giddy for all of ten minutes.

Then my face, every freaking INCH OF MY FACE, started to feel like it was melting off like the Nazis at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

Thank heavens I fell asleep in the back of the car on the way home.

I now feel like I have been run over several times by a bulldozer.

People who tell you to try new things are idiots. Don't listen to them.