Tuesday, November 30, 2004
The Opposite of Hot Tuna
The smell of fish and cold weather. Two things that assault my senses as badly as roadkill in an elevator and a root canal without Novocain. I could offer psycho- analytical reasons. There could be nothing more to it than a hypersensitivity to that odor and that feel. Like an allergy. But then there are those who claim allergies are psychosomatic as well. Who cares? Here's my version:I was a picky eater as a child. I couldn't get vegetables past my lips without a heavy gag reflex. My older siblings, Jack and Judy, used to laugh at me and tell me the nuns would force feed me when I got to school. That was a particularly shitty thing to say to a four year old who was about to start serving a 17 year sentence in catholic school. But I can't think of two people I love more than them. This gives rise to hope for world peace, I suppose.
I'm sure the fish aversion started on our yearly trip to the Jersey shore. With the industrial odors of the Philly and Camden waterfront well behind us, we whisked too quickly through the sweet Jersey Pines. The final hurdle to Long Beach Island was a wooden causeway that scared the living crap out of me. The huge whitewall tires of the '51 Pontiac rumbled over the planks which seemed way too flimsy a separation from the putrid bog rot of Barnagat Bay. We always hit it at low tide. The smell of rotting sea life permeated the car. My brother took enormous delight in wrenching every ounce of humor out of the situation. He insisted that we were about to crash through the planks and tumble into the wretched muck beneath us. My sister was always highly amused by this. My reaction was to curl up on the floor and cower, certain of impending death or, worse yet, having the source of that smell fill my nose and other orifices. So who could eat anything that smelled like that?
Inexplicably, however, is the lone exception of fried flounder. A bottom feeder coated in stale bread and oil. Mercury, possible mold and saturated fat. Never more, of course.
I'll save the cold weather phobia for tomorrow
posted by Bud @ 8:09 AM
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