Have you ever skipped lunch, just to make room in anticipation for an outrageously amazing dinner? When that dinner finally arrives, you feel justified to eat twice the normal portion of dinner?

I did just that recently, and nearly ended up in the emergency room.

This was a deeply embarrassing mishap. I planned to never bring it up, and prayed that the incident would just fade from our memories. But my 12 year old decided that this makes a good story for her Language Arts writing assignment. So, below is her writing narrative of what happened:

Mama's Fish House


Over Thanksgiving Break, which happened to be the week of my dad’s birthday, my family and my dad’s side of the family went to Maui. For his birthday dinner, we went to Mama’s Fish House, the fanciest restaurant on the island. Even at only 5:30 PM, we could already see the tiki torches lazily blazing away on the pathway lined with stones and palm trees, and we could hear the waves lapping at the beach just a few feet away.

Mama's Fish House Grounds


With eight adoring relatives with us, my sister and I could only expect them to take a thousand pictures, and we were right. By the time we actually sat down for dinner, it was already dark.

About half an hour into our meal, my sister Ta and I asked Mom and Dad if we could go for a short walk along the beach.

“No!” they answered firmly.

“Please?” we begged. “It’s Dad’s birthday today! Of course we’ll eat more when we get back.”

They were easy to persuade that day. “Ten minutes. And you have to stay on the restaurant’s grounds.”

“Thanks,” we called as we rushed to the door.

Meanwhile, on the way out, I stubbed my toe on one of the rocks siding the pathway. It hurt, but the darkness prevented me from noticing anything out of the ordinary.

When Ta and I returned to the dining room ten minutes later, my toe hurt horribly. I glanced down at it under the table and was surprised to see blood all over my toe and flip-flop. I quickly excused myself to the bathroom to clean it up, but did not mention the bloody foot for fear of disturbing the family dinner. I did not know it would be disturbed anyway, by another event.

After cleaning the wound, I opened the door to leave the bathroom and was greeted by a strange sight.

My mother, the one who always told me not to touch the floor in public places, was lying on the ground outside the restroom. She looked…asleep.

A flashback of something she had told me once ran through my mind. She had been driving along a road so backed up the car wasn’t moving at all, so she and her friends in the car had decided to play Truth or Dare. She had been dared to do cartwheels on the side of the road, which she did not really know how to do. She went out and did clumsy cartwheels anyway, and effectively provided fabulous entertainment for everyone else stuck in the traffic.

I honestly thought she was playing Truth or Dare again. That was before she opened her eyes and said with a woozy smile, “I fainted.”

After that, our dinner was a surreal blur of waiters, relatives, and other random people asking her if she was okay, if she needed anything, if they should call 911. Apparently, she had fainted twice that night—she said it just felt like falling asleep, and, never having fainted before, had wondered if she was dying while I wondered if she was playing Truth or Dare. One of my aunts, who was a nurse, said she had fainted from a dramatic drop in blood pressure, because after taking an allergy pill my mom had drunk a mai tai on an empty stomach, then had eaten too much food.

Opakapaka swims in butter sauce. Yum.


We all thought it was hilarious that Mom had fainted because she ate too much food. Mama’s Fish House was delicious, but I’m warning you, no matter how good something looks, don’t eat too much of it.

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