I had rehearsed the pronunciations again and again in my car right before I walked in. Watching the man in front of me bumble and butcher “Karaage” I thought This fool. You could have practiced. It’s borderline racist. I looked around as if I had said that out loud, and that people were agreeing with me. I, the great unifier as they might one day refer to me, stepped up to the till to order my food. The woman’s face smiled politely as I thoroughly mangled the Japanese language. How long will this painful memory haunt me? I wondered as I took a seat in the intimate waiting area of the ramen restaurant.
“15 minutes” the woman had said. 15 brutal minutes. Just me, this receipt, and my mind. My phone was in my car, the battery completely drained from me replaying a video to help me with my pronunciation of the Japanese word for chicken wings. So I busied myself with a familiar task: Organizing my seemingly endless catalogue of worries. Lately, cardiac health had taken a back seat to Alzheimer’s disease. This new, sexy bit of uneasiness had been brought on by the constant barrage of commercials detailing the disease and its various and frankly all too common symptoms. A sweet-looking older man begins buying 4 litres of milk seven days a week, or a woman in her 40’s begins misplacing common items around the house. I do those kinds of things. I’ve done them today. I have a lot of coffee creamer in the fridge and I can never…
