Did You Get The Wasabi?!

It was New Year’s Eve and I had a few tasks to complete before a planned visit to a close friend’s place for dinner. The pandemic continues to rage so my wife and I kept our New Year plans to the bare minimum; visiting a close friend who had a tough year and was the most deserving person we could think of for our compassion.

The plan was for us to have homemade sushi at our friend’s place since he owns a fishing lodge and had a freezer full of fish just for this purpose. Plus, he is a masterful sushi chef having created spectacular tuna, salmon and crab rolls, nigiri and sashimi. We had an appetizer ready to bring and all I needed to get was some Wasabi paste. With plenty of time I stopped by the liquor store first and then zipped along to the grocery store.

I only had three items to get so I didn’t need a written list. I quickly grabbed the first two and then my wife calls. This is the part where I blame it all on her. She adds four or five more items for me to get. I count them off on one hand knowing that I’ll surely forget one of them if I don’t concentrate. Is that chocolate on sale? Focus… The store isn’t that busy so I cruise through it completing the list and hop into the car to head home.

Feeling pretty good about myself I swagger upstairs after arriving back home and check in with my wife. I love her but when she starts a sentence with “Did you remember to get…” it sends a cold chill down my spine.

“Did you remember to get the Wasabi?”

“Oh shit! No!” How could I have forgotten the one thing I went to the store to get in the first place. Really?

No problem, it was still early and I still needed to walk the dog. I’ll just zip down to the corner grocery store nearest our house and will walk the dog after getting the all important Wasabi.

550pm I get to the store. We don’t have to be there until 7pm, that’s plenty of time. The store has an underground parking garage so I park there, take the dog up to the street level and duck inside to get the Wasabi while he waits tied up outside, looking at me like he’s both confused and alarmed by my interruption of our walk.

“I’ll be right back, don’t worry”. A passerby gives me an odd look at just that moment but I guess if they don’t understand, they don’t have a pet.

Inside I easily find the Wasabi, the one that comes as a paste in a small tube. Got it, and picked up some treats for the two teenage boys who were going to be at home all night. As I exited the store I realized I didn’t want to carry these items while walking the dog so walked right by him and down into the parking garage to put them in the trunk. Now he was really looking at me strangely but that all disappeared when I emerged ready to take him for his walk. Finally.

We did a short-ish loop down and over a few blocks arriving back at the store after more than a few pee stops. Standing in front of a dark, closed, locked and brutally inaccessible grocery store, I started to feel the panic rise up in the back of my head. How could they close the store and cut off access to their parking garage? And when the hell did they close up, I thought they were open until 8pm?

As I stood there in disbelief, several other people walked up to the doors and peered in, just as dumbfounded as me but clearly not as concerned. With the realization dawning on me I began to rationalize my situation. The car could spend the night in the garage, I did not care about that. I could walk home. It was the Wasabi in the trunk I desperately needed. At that moment my wife called.

“Did you get the Wasabi?”

“Uhm, not exactly.”

“What do you mean? We have to be there in half an hour?”

After a brief but generous explanation of my current circumstances I still got no sympathy whatsoever. The only thing anyone in that conversation seemed to be focused on was the Wasabi.

“Try the Sushi place near the grocery store, they will have Wasabi.” Ah, that is pretty good lateral thinking. Or just the result of someone solely focused on the Wasabi. Not even a mention of my car trapped in a dungeon.

Completely undaunted by the prospect of walking into a Sushi restaurant to ask for a container of Wasabi with absolutely no intention of ordering Sushi, I turned and bolted across the lane with the dog in tow.

It was dark, closed and the loneliest Sushi place I had ever seen. Back to square one.

As I walked back to the grocery store I remembered that the underground parking lot was shared with a residential building whose parking spots were separated from the rest by some metal gates. If I could just get into the residential side of the parking lot I could then get into the grocery store’s side and get my car. And the Wasabi.

Oddly, the residential side had one level of parking open to the laneway so I could walk right in. But I needed to be down in P2 so I found the elevator. Enclosed inside a vestibule I stood outside looking in wondering just how many security cameras were recording me. I started thinking about how I would explain what I was doing to a Police Officer as I approached the keypad at the entry door.

1011 – Pejman. I dial the number and it rings. Six times and no joy.
1012 – Anderson. I dial again. Nothing.
When I retold this part of the story to my middle son he looked at me with shock and disgust. There is no way in hell he would ever dial up some total stranger and beg for entry into their building with some lame excuse like “I need to get the Wasabi…”
I press on but the next number looks hopeless.
1013 – Occupied. While I dial the unlucky number I also call my youngest son. He answers “Owen, I need you to come down here and pick a lock for me. Right away.”

“Really?” he says. Sweeping aside the nagging concerns of bad parenting, I figure if this kid ordered a lock picking kit from Amazon last year we may as well put it to good use now when one of us truly needs it.

And at just that moment, on the third ring, the entry system pings delightfully and displays the words “The door is open, proceed inside”.
“I’ll call you back” I say to my youngest dropping the call like a hot rock and gleefully opening the door. How that happened without a person answering on the other end of the line hitting a button to let me in I don’t know but I wasn’t about to argue at this point. Bingo, we were inside. Almost home free.

Down on P2 I exit the vestibule and with cat-like reactions dive back behind myself to grab the door before it closes. I suddenly realized I would be trapped inside P2 if the door closed and I couldn’t get the steel gates to open. So I wrap the dog’s leash around the inside door handle and tell him to sit. He looks at me with his head tilted like I was absolutely nuts. Twenty feet away he, and all the security cameras, watch me jumping up and down on the rubber hose laid down in front of the exit. Nothing. Two or three more hops and I was getting desperate. Then I remembered something about those hoses – if you jam down one heel with your weight and then stab it with the other heel – POING – it was open. I ran back to get the dog and sprinted out the exit to my car. One more rubber hose on the way out and I was free. With the Wasabi.

Phew. Does this stuff happen to everyone or just me?