University of Toronto freshman Mike Morgan’s vision of Tuesday night’s sushi outing was turned sharply on its head last week as, to his horror, each and every person accompanying him unexpectedly had a stable grasp on how to hold and use chopsticks.
Just one week after moving to Toronto from Smallwood, Ontario to attend the University of Toronto for a Bachelor of Psychology, Mike had already gathered a small group of five frosh to accompany him to a sushi night out. Sushi, a rare and exotic food which only a fraction of the rural Smallwood population had dared try, was a speciality of Mike’s and from day one he was eager to flex his cultural prowess.
“Where I come from, just knowing that Chinese isn’t a language but rather Mandarin and Cantonese are what’s spoken in China made me the most multilingual person in town,” explained Mike in a later interview. “I’m the first person to leave town to attend a university in five years, and the first male in six years to graduate high school without a pregnant girlfriend.”
Among the five-person sushi cohort were Lisa Harmon and Lauren O’Bailey, two students on Mike’s “would sleep with” list also attempting their Bachelor of Psychology, and whom Mike had intended on impressing with a brief tutorial on chopstick use. Sadly, Mike’s vision of deftly using chopsticks to effortlessly consume piece after piece of sushi while his friends struggled not to drop food on the floor was a harsh contrast to the events which actually took place.
“As soon as we sat down I knew something was wrong,” described Mike. “As my friends identified and opened the chopstick packets I felt myself begin to sweat.”
“One guy, Tom, broke his chopsticks apart and starting rubbing them together to remove any excess shavings. I felt my heart trying to rip itself out of my chest as I struggled to cope with the fact that my secret pre-meal move was executed almost mindlessly and not a single person at the table seemed to have noticed.”
“As Lisa opened the menu and starting complaining that the bento boxes were too inflated with California rolls, I knew there was no hope for me and I immediately suffered a stroke. The left half of my body went numb and I felt myself beginning to drool.”
It was when Lauren broke off a piece of wasabi and began mixing it into a small volume of soy sauce that Mike suffered his second stroke, this time on his right side. Unable to remain sitting his head careened into the table his nose was broken three places.
Mike has since fully recovered and, while suffering from a minor identity crisis, hopes to regain his confidence by dazzling his peers with the Christmas lights he set up in his dorm room and by toting a messenger bag to class in lieu of a backpack.
