This is going to be one of those episodes you either love or hate, because the topic is sushi. I realize there are hard core sushi fans out there who could eat those little seaweed nuggets all day long and go back for a second plank. To these folks, sushis are encapsulated in texture, patterned like a spring meadow – a graceful world unto themselves – a magical multicolored elixir for life laying gently across a cedar board.
Saying I don’t care for them around our house, or “I’d like to use these in a miniature frisbee golf tournament” is a kind of blasphemy, and when I do, I run the risk of awakening the domestic Kraken and being slapped multiple times with chop sticks by those who purport to love me the most.
However, and here it is, those dinky circles of tightly woven bites seem to me like a kind of Zen meditation wrapped in rice paste, a snack you eat while sitting cross-legged in a rock garden during a counseling session. I am a fan of counseling, so it’s not about mental health, and I have a rock garden, so it’s not about rocks. I just can’t take the thought of the two of them together, rocks and counseling all bundled up in kelp.
The one time I tried sushi I could not help but notice the Chinese Zodiac paper place mat underneath, the one that represents every year as an animal. I became anxious wondering whether I was in a year other than the one I was actually living in, particularly in regard to the checks I’d recently written. Should I have been using the date line at the top to write the Year of the Rooster, or God forbid, the Year of the Rat? I can tell you there is not enough room on my checks to write “Year of the Dragon,” and my bank isn’t going to issue me special checks to accommodate a foreign calendar that is completely different than the one used by the rest of the known world.
Even if I could get passed the Chinese year, I still cringe thinking of eating sushi made with octopus’ eyeballs and smoked prawn that feels like it’s trying to transcend my own spirituality, or duck in behind my own faith, and leave me as some animal form like a cockroach. It’s just a lot of spirituality for me to handle, and frankly, it scares me to death. I’m a lot more comfortable with other, less devoted round foods, like a Wallace and Gromit Oreo cookie. Maybe a bit of whip cream straight down the old gizzard to top it off. That eases a lot of humble tension for me.
My wife picked up a package of sushi the other day right after church. I wondered at the time whether there was something in the sermon, something small and circular and packed with seaweed that inspired her to bring sushi home with us. I heard the same sermon she did, and I can tell you there was not a word in there about what to eat for lunch, particularly anything about perfectly crafted cylindrical collages. Then I wondered whether there was something I had missed in the church message, perhaps something about sesame seeds or ginger, or using chopsticks as a martial arts weapon.
As we piled on the groceries at checkout, Cashier Lady, scanning the Saran-wrapped package of roly-poly sushi sliders, asked a probing question:
“What do you like about these things,” she asked my wife.
“Oh, I love sushi,” my wife was quick to answer, “they are soooo good. They’ve got a little of everything in them.”
The lady shot a glance to me to see if I was on board with all this. I just shook my head.
“I can’t do them,” I said, “everyone is the same size. It looks like a ration to me, like something already divided up. There’s no gravy or anything to go with them.”
“Oh, you gotta have the fixens,” piped in the Register Lady, “Oh yea, uh huh, it’s all about the fixens. Give me some corn bread, slather that puppy up with butter and jelly and I’m there. Home for supper, baby, that is my people food.”
“Well, I like sushi,” my wife continued, “because it’s filling but you don’t fill full when you eat it, like eating a salad. My husband likes the whole nine yards, a plate meal, chicken, the works."
“Oh, I’m with him,” Register Lady said, “Give me all that, the whole meal, and the gravy. I want that chicken and all the sides. And mashed potatoes. I’m with him.”
I was laughing hysterically, but I began to feel that the “I’m with him part” didn’t go over that well with my wife.
Our quiet ride home gave me some time to think about what I don’t like about sushi. Actually, the taste of sushi is a lot like nothing I’ve ever eaten, and by nothing, I mean it has no taste at all. Were those fellers faking it as chicken nuggets or hors d’oeuvre? Was there some ancient wisdom inside each one, like rings in a tree that foretold the day each one of us would meet our destiny? Was there something medicinal in that sticky-ish texture, the Elmer’s glue that holds them together? I used to eat Elmer’s Glue when I was a kid, and really, it wasn’t all that bad.
By sheer coincidence, we had just taken a hard right curve through a round-about when it hit me. The reason I don’t care for sushi was that every sushylite, singular for sushi, is exactly the same size and shape as the next one. Every single one with no variety. The freedom I always thought was a given, that is, the size of a bite of food I put in my mouth, had already been determined by a sushylite Sue Chef preparer-person, not me. I realized I needed to be making those kinds of decisions myself and take control of my own bites, my own sushi destiny, the master and commander of my sushylite ship.
It wasn’t always this way. On the radar screen of sushi history, a small blip determined the bite size of this now popular food form, a proportion we must all accept and use for the rest of our lives. There is no changing it, sushi size and shape is here to stay, and the truth behind it, as you are about to hear, is stranger than a bamboo shoot.
Some seventy-five years ago the now defunct Chinese province of X’ieeuuiiy, was drawn erroneously into the battle for the Fuaog Bay and sent the only ship in their fleet out to do battle with enemy naval forces. Blown to smithereens before the crew even had a chance to put down their centerboard, the four men on board clambered onto a wide-brimmed garden-hat and using only their wits and military rations, began a thousand-mile journey that is just now being made public. Forensic evidence taken from the contents of their stomachs now suggests they used toothpaste to form circles and filled the little donut-like shapes with bean bits, dried goat milk, and the random jellyfish tentacles they could gather overboard. Incredulous as it now seems, those adorable stomach remains of nutrition became, years later, the inspiration for what is now our modern-day sushi. Tragically, the city of X’ieeuuiiy disappeared from the map by a rare collapse of the earth which swallowed up all nineteen residents, a mix of both urban and rural flute carvers.
This is a true story, at least the one I tell myself late at night when I lie awake trying to imagine how sushi gained such worldly power.
Resisting my own short sightedness, and in effort to gain my rightful place and stature back in our family, I knew I had to test my theory. Were all sushylytes truly the same size?
I returned to the store, snuck up to the sushi counter and with one expert motion, slit open a package of California rolls, those artistic Lincoln log masterpieces. Incredibly, I came up with the same measurement for each one, down to the milli-sushi meter. I was doomed, and I could feel the pressure building in my brow. I wanted to be wrong, to be able to leave the store and believe that there was variety in McSushis but it was not to be. Before I could slice through another package in my desperate attempt to find one that was a different size, I heard a voice murmuring over my shoulder.
“You see any fried chicken in there? Any cornbread?" came the faint voice in my ear. “Remember, it’s all about the fixens, always the fixens.”
I turned around, and scanned the grocery horizon, but there was no one there. Maybe it was the Year of the Snake or worse, the Year of the Bat. Maybe… but I like to think it was the Year of the Whispering Cashier with All the Fixens, and I could live with that.