Sushi Is Like Skiing

Sushi is like skiing. Sushi is also like golfing. Sushi is not like bowling. This I realized yesterday when I suggested, “Dinner?” to a friend.
She came back with, “Sushi?”
“Uh…no,” I replied.

There are certain things in life you should learn. There are certain things in life you should teach your children, such as skiing and golfing. Why? Because those are two things that later on in college and beyond they will be asked to do with friends and if no one had ever given them the opportunity to learn the proper etiquette for these sports, they either have to decline the invitations, making up excuses, or go, and suffer great embarrassment.

You should never step onto a golf course without knowing the rules of navigating one. You do not need to be a great golfer, but you do need to know things like being quiet when your partners are teeing off and realizing you’re slow and letting other groups “play through”. It’s the same with a ski slope. You never walk onto a ski slope and grab the rope tow without ever being shown how to properly squeeze the rope between your hands instead of grabbing it and taking a huge, painful, face plant.

Through the course of my life I have come to equate sushi with golfing and skiing. You are always being asked “to go get sushi” or sushi is the popular common food the group at the table on a night out for drinks settles on to order. If you’ve never tried sushi, or haven’t been brought up eating it, you’re the odd man out. People who love sushi also seem to have a lot of fun picking the various kinds on the menu. Sushi, along with golfing and skiing, are life skills you should definitely teach your children from the time they are very young.

But bowling…ah…bowling is different. When someone asks you to go bowling they don’t care if you’ve never been bowling before. Bowling is something you can go and do “cold” and everyone will have a good, good-natured laugh as you learn. In fact, trying bowling in a group for the first time actually makes you look like a risk-taker, a good sport, and a fun person to be around. Not so when you embarrass your friends on the golf course by telling a joke when someone is putting or on the ski slope when the whole line has to shut down to untangle you and your skis from the rope tow. And sushi? Well, if you don’t like it, you always feel a little left out.

I bet as you read this you were just waiting for me to get to the part where there is this great anology between life and sushi, golfing, skiing, and bowling, right? There isn’t. Sometimes life is just that – life, and there are things that are essential to getting you through it and you should pay careful attention to gaining these “life skills”.

Me? I got the skiing down in gym class in college. Phew! My parents have never even been to a ski slope. How lucky for me my college had their own ski slope and it was mandatory in freshman PE. Now, there’s a school that has a handle on life skills. I was pretty lucky that my father was a golfer and gave me plenty of the time and attention it took to learn my way around a golf course and a driving range. I was also fortunate in the bowling category. Both of my parents bowled on leagues and spent Sunday afternoons teaching this skill to my brother and I. But the sushi? Bingo. Been my nemesis for years. I’ve tried. Vegetable (because I’d NEVER eat a raw fish) rice, seaweed, shrimp, you name it – I keep trying it and I get no where. Some, covered in sauce, I can tolerate a bite or two, but not for a meal. I always feel like the wet blanket when my friends say, “Sushi?” and I have to say uh…no. I attribute this to only having been exposed to sushi in the last six years, and considering my life-long aversion to raw fish, I don’t think it’s something I’m likely to overcome any time soon.

And so, as another day goes by, parents please assess the life skills of your children before they go off to college, prepare them well – introduce them to a ski and a golf club, feed them sushi, and…I have written.

…and, really, who wants a life that’s safe, expedient, and thin?

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