The Fish

A long time ago, I pretty much ate only hamburgers. Not only beef. Just hamburgers. That's all. Except I didn't eat the outside of the bun, because it "tasted too round."

I never said I was a reasonable child.

I remember one day at Furrs cafeteria after church with my grandparents when I got brave and tried ham. This started my love affair with all things pork. A few years later I branched out and tried some chicken, most likely grilled by my dad. (Which fueled my love affair with my grill.)

There are still lots of foods that I don't eat. Most notably pasta and cheese. I think I've already waxed poetic about the texture of food and why I don't like mushy things, with exceptions for mashed potatoes, ice cream, and cranberry sauce (the jelly kind that takes the shape of the can...that's the only way to go).

There are some other foods that I will eat, but I can't think too hard about what I'm eating. Like cottage cheese. Most of the time I'm ok, but every once in a while I'll remember that I'm eating curds and I start to feel queasy, even after reciting "Little Miss Muffitt" to myself.

I've never really tried fish. I had a couple of bites of my parents' fish at some seafood place in KC a few months ago, but I just wasn't feeling it. Sometimes I'm able to stomach a nice crab cake, but then I remember that it's crab and it's fishy and ew, and I have to stop eating. I also recall a lobster tail at a rehearsal dinner, and by "recall" I mean "I only ate it because I was very drunk and there was a big bowl of butter next to it, and things that one dips in butter can't be all that bad, but I was still vaguely aware that I was eating something that once crawled on the bottom of the ocean, and it's a good thing that on that same night I also learned about Tom Collins, because otherwise I would so not have eaten it, not that I remember what it was like anyway."

Where was I? Oh right. Fish.

So last night I found myself at a seafood restaurant where I had a number of gift certificates. After I ordered "a nice shiraz" because I didn't feel like looking at a wine list (and I'd already had plenty of wine at the reception for the three hours before dinner) I decided to be bold and order a crab cake as an appetizer. It went fairly well, because it had some sort of corn salsa and something called "etouffe" (which is a word I'm hoping I just made up, because a small part of me is worried that it means squid or eel puree and that's something I just don't want to know).

Then, bolstered with the wine and the success of the crab cake, I decided to take the plunge, so to speak. Much like my unadultered passion for butter, I always like things cajun and/or blackened. And when I told the server that I was frightened of fish, he recommended the cajun mahi mahi. It was going to be free, and I felt stupid ordering a steak at a seafood place, so I went for it. I'm almost 30, and papa's on the case, so I shouldn't be scared to try new things once in a while, right?

I approached the plate with some trepidation. But it was pretty blackened and looked kind of like grilled chicken, and we know I like grilled chicken, so maybe it won't be so bad. And it wasn't bad. It was almost even good.

For a while.

About six bites in, I started hearing that little voice in the back of my head saying "YOU'RE EATING FISH! FISH!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? STOP IT RIGHT NOW!" And I tried to ignore him, and even said a bit of little miss muffitt, but I don't know any nursey rhymes about fish, because how can one know as a child that one should be learning these things to help one to eat creepy foods twenty-five years in the future?

After I'd finished about half of the mahi (I'm not saying it twice...that's just stupid...like Boutros Boutros-Ghali...who is he kidding?) and all of the mashed potatoes, the little voice was throbbing in my ears (or it could have been the wine...I'm not totally sure) and I just couldn't do it any more. So I stopped and ate more bread to try and convince the voice that everything was ok.

He didn't listen. I've been hearing that voice all day, and he refuses to go away. He keeps saying "YOU ATE FISH! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? FISH!!!" And I have that queasy cottage cheese feeling, and no it's not a hangover, because I've had those before and this is far different.

And writing about fish and cottage cheese in the same paragraph just made me not feel good. So yeah, I'm going to call it day now.