While it’s great to have brothers to give me wedgies, teach me about heavy metal and take slapshots at my face when they play street hockey, I’m especially thankful that I have sisters. Everything I know about girls I learned from them (and from watching “The Facts of Life”). My sisters raised me to be sensitive to the plight of the fairer sex; I learned what to do (girls like it when you have clean nails) and what not to do (never give flowers after a fight). Most of all, they gave me an appreciation of natural fiber blends, the importance of good tailoring and gossip.



This past weekend my sisters, Tator Tot and I experienced the grand opening of Samurai’s Japanese Steakhouse in Spanaway. Jerry and Debbie Halsey’s old world Japanese, 10,000-square-foot teppanyaki restaurant sports 14 grills, and my family commanded one-half of a grill, laughing hysterically and catching Chef Mike’s food flips in our mouths.



Over grilled steak, lobster and chicken, we decided to solve all our problems in a way that keeps brainless daytime TV hosts like Oprah and Dr. Phil stocked with semi-retarded guests who take out a second mortgage on the trailer in order to scrape up enough money for airfare so that they can be humiliated and, as Dr. Phil puts it, “bitch-slapped” on syndicated TV: We buried our feelings in bathroom humor, booze and way-too-much food.



After dinner, we carried the conversation to the bar — a giant red-glowing temple inside the restaurant. Inside, over tall, glowing Hurricane’s —vodka, gin, light rum, Barcadi 151 rum, amaretto, triple sec, grapefruit and pineapple juices and grenadine syrup — I learned to never, ever, wear open-toed summer slides with tights. Good to know.



[Samurai’s Japanese Steakhouse, 19321 Mountain Hwy. E., Spanaway, 253.846.5557]