Sushi Stories 3

While I was still in training at the sushi bar, the Vietnamese kids who worked as hosts and servers were trying to get to know me a little bit. Here is the weirdest part of our conversation:
"So, do you have a girlfriend?"
"Yeah, I do."
"Is she Asian?"
They all looked at me rather expectantly.
"No," I said, "she's, um . . . white?"

When we were younger I used to tease my sister because whenever I was talking about someone I knew who she did not, she would invariably ask me, almost immediately, "Are they nice?"
What was I supposed to say? "No! I've never met a bigger jerk in my life!" Most people tend to be nice in my experience, at least on the surface. I'm sure my sister was only trying to learn more about these people that I knew, but she repeated the "Are they nice?" question so consistently that it seemed like she was desperately seeking confirmation of basic human goodness in the world.

I am less sure what the sushi kids were seeking in asking if I was dating an Asian girl. But it would be funny to ask that with the frequency Elizabeth asked about "niceness."
"So I was talking to Bob from accounting about clearing your paycheck today . . ."
"Oh really? Is he Asian?"
...
I guess I could keep going, but this only seems half-way funny in my head. I'm sorry. I have realized that I am bad at remembering a couple of things. I am pretty good at remembering general concepts, story-lines and philosophies, etc. Abstract stuff tends to stick with me. For this reason I never took a whole lot of notes in my classes. Abstract concepts were things I knew I would remember, and more specific details seemed like trivial things I'd never need to know anyway.
In some ways, it seems amazing that I passed college. But really I just made sure to take a lot of honors classes, which reward abstract thought and not silly mundane facts. Pshaw!
Anyway, so I have never been good at memorizing times tables, or names (I have just learned to say basically "Hi, I'm Aaron! If you tell me your name, I probably won't remember it in two minutes, but miracles do happen, so let's give it a shot anyway." when meeting someone), or, to my deepest lament, jokes. I can, and do, make up jokes and puns on the spot all the time, and occasionally say things that other people think are actually funny. Or I will see or hear something funny, and think "oh man, that's great!" but a week later I will have forgotten it completely. I'll have an abstract, intellectual notion of what made it funny, but there's not a whole lot of humor in theoretically generalizations. Details and specifics are what makes things funny, and those are the things that I cannot seem to hold onto.
So there's an un-funny story about not being funny. Shouldn't that create some sort of humor vacuum that funny things will rush in to fill? Man, I really really hope so. If not, sorry everyone. :{( <-- sad man with mustache
...
and wow, this isn't really about sushi any more, is it? I just had two stories that I wanted to tell about the restaurant, and I've yet to get to either one of them. Maybe tomorrow!
xxoo

(also, today's True Tales of Bravery and Honor I think might be my favorite so far . . . until the next one on Sunday, that is! What do you all think?)