Taste Testing
“Oh come on,” my brother coaxed, “you’ll never regret it.” I stared at the messy, bubbling frothy glass in his hand, filled with a mixture so strange that I don’t think it even had a real color. I slowly shook me head and with all the 13-year-old dignity I could muster announced, “No, I really don’t think I ever will.”
My brother, like many other young scouts, has always had a strong propensity for tormenting his stomach with bizarre food combinations and abnormal beverages. He never drinks soda without mixing it with something, never eats ice cream without some sort of unique topping and loves telling shocking tales about the worst thing he had ever eaten. Never, ever, ever, would I touch something that he had created. I flatly refused. Sardines over ice cream, oranges dipped in ranch dressing to me should no longer even count as food.
The delight of odd food substances is a strange subject. It is not socially accepted, yet neither is it revolted. When the topic comes up in conversation, someone always proudly volunteers the weirdest thing that he or she has ever eaten. In secondary and high school I would have simply marked these people as attention getters. However, I have seen this strange phenomenon exhibited in all stages of life alike. Perhaps attention getting is not the only reason people go so far out of their way to disturb their otherwise peaceful stomachs.
Now I sit and stare at this grotesque concoction that I made with my own hands. It goes against everything I have ever taught myself on the subject. What kind of a lawmaker am I if I break them myself? “Oh come on,” my brother coaxes again over the phone, “it’ll be delicious! You’ll never regret it.” I like weird things; I often even go out of my way to find new ways to make my life interesting. I meditated in the JFSB elevator, climbed in the fountains at the JFSB courtyard, stayed up until 4 am outside eating strawberries and hiding easter eggs with friends, spent an hour trying to drop a quarter straight down the SWKT steps, and several other activities which cross the limits of legality. Yet never once did I truly leave my zone.
There is a comfort in a vague knowledge of what will happen when I do something. But tasting something really weird? I do not understand what vague unease it is that gnaws at my stomach, other than perhaps preparatory revulsion. Somehow, it conjures up an irrational fear, that I don’t know what it will do to me. Obviously, I should know that it won’t really affect my taste buds or destroy my stomach, but somehow, the I find the idea so foreign as to be terrifying.
Parachutes, hot air balloons, hurricane chasers, food tasters, maybe they all share something in common. They all seek something outside of the ordinary, something that will make them feel or experience something in a way that will make them unique. They do it not so much for the thrill, but perhaps for the chance to have a story that sets them apart. The more people try what they do, the more the thrill seekers have to try to find something better, something more. It defines part of who they are, it makes them cool. That’s one theory anyway. Another theory is that they are trying to repress their childhood demons. Things scared them as children now make them feel powerful to overcome.
My brother immediately suggested trying a strange new concoction when he heard about my writing assignment. Since I was too busy to try my original idea of going hobo for a day, I reluctantly agreed. With his coaching, a strange reddish, brownish, grayish, popcornishly crunchy mixture appeared in my cottage cheese container bowl. “What do you have in your fridge? Just start reading me names…Ah yes, plain yogurt, miracle whip, oh, do you have popcorn? Yes, make some of that up. And I think it needs…yeah, add some peanut butter. Hmmm….It still doesn’t sound like enough…I know! I bet it needs color. Okay, what do you have that’s red in your fridge? Spaghetti sauce? Perfect! Just add a little…Excellent..Bon appetit!” I stared at the revolting mixture. Was I really going to eat it? Years of avoiding it when someone else coaxed me to try something gross, and now I was doing it of my own free will? How would it feel? Would it be any different?
There is that one demon. Many a child with duty-bound parents can remember something distasteful that he or she had to eat at one point or another. I remember once Mom went crazy with a new juice machine. For supper, in my hand was placed a huge green plastic cup of thick, gloppy cabbage goo. When Mom first bought the cups, the green had seemed pretty. Now it just made it look worse. Like eating grass, except I thought grass might taste better. I asked to skip dinner. I would have rather gone hungry. That stuff never could have been intended to go inside a human stomach. I didn’t have to taste it to know I would hate it. However, I wasn’t allowed victory. Being a middle child meant that another generation before me had already worn out the impatience button on my parents. They were never yielding. Eventually, hours of sitting at the table forced my hand. Nevertheless, not even the gimlet glare of my parents could keep it inside my rebellious stomach.
My fingers reluctantly grabbed hold of my spoon. I started at the spoon. I bought it at DI for 10 cents. Now I was using it to betray me. “Come one, stop wasting time, just eat it!” I ignored my younger brother’s all too eager coaxings and slowly shoveled some of the strange composite onto my eating utensil. It looked so disgusting. I gave one final wince, and ate it. As the strange flavor played at different corners of my mouth and confused my taste buds, I tilted my head to one side thoughtfully. It wasn’t actually that bad. It wasn’t good either, but I felt sort of let down. I had avoided it so strongly for so long, what was I to think of it now that it was finished? It seemed that I should at least have received a stomachache for my efforts. Something that bad should by all rights have caused some mild form of catastrophe. Is that all my fears boiled down to? Are they always wrong?
“Ha, told you it would kill you, didn’t I?”
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