« Lemony Goodness | Main | There Is Such A Thing as a Free Lunch »

Trust Issues
January 16, 2006

Even though I had the basic skills to survive, my parents proudly put me in swimming lessons at the age of 5.


There were about twelve kids in my class, all were different levels of swimming expertise.


I could dog paddle, a skill I learned when I fell out of the boat just off the shore on San Juan Island, but real swimming skills were not in my repertoire.


I did, however, have the best bathing suit in the class. It was a pink number with white daisies all down the front to match the plastic daisies on my sandals. Jimmy C., a little troll of a bully, tried to play "Keep-A-Way" with one of my sandals one day after class. But when The Father arrived to pick me up Jimmy ran screaming down the sidewalk when The Father hollered, "HEY!".


The Father was a big strapping fellow who was partial to rolling cigarettes in his shirt sleeve and bench-pressing small livestock. His appearance - while very handsome - could be frightening to small children, and that guy who tried to steal our buoys.


Anyway - the swimming.


I wasn't a swimming cap kind of girl - too much hair to fit - but I was a nose plug kind of girl. Mine was the typical pencil eraser pink that slid down over the top of my nose, and was help in place by the rubber strap around the head. I had not yet mastered the art of breathing out my nose, so the nose plug - with the help of my thumb and forefinger - was my only means of survival.


At least that's what I thought.


The lessons were fabulous. I loved the back stroke and swimming under water. And I was really good at retrieving stuff off the bottom of the pool.


But all of these things were done in the shallow end of the pool. The Safe Spot. The place where you could touch bottom and stand on your tip-toes like a ballerina. The place where toes became blistered from the plaster at the bottom of the pool, and the place I am pretty sure Susie S. used to pee for the sheer fun of it.


Week two, however, brought on the dreaded, "Jump off the Diving Board" class. Something I was completely not prepared for.


The Instructor had a long metal pole she would hold while standing on the side of the pool. The deal was the grab hold of one end just before leaping off the board. She would help pull you back up to the surface, where you would let go and swim to the side. It all seemed very reasonable and very safe.

Until it was my turn.


I would make it all the way to the end of the diving board, grab the pole, and then the fear of never making it out of that pool alive overcame me. I did not trust my instructor enough to pull me up. Even though she did it for everyone else, I was afraid she would get distracted and forget I was on the other end of the pole and I would sink to the bottom of the pool without one person taking notice.


So I would let go of the pole, and walk my way back to the ladder. I would do this five or six times until the exasperated instructor would tell me to go back to the end of the line.


This little dance would go on for two or three turns until such time the director would blow his whistle signalling the end of class, which just happened to coincide with a surge of trust and confidence on my part, and I would go flailing into the pool.


Without the pole.

This is how I approached water skiing (Causing a large gash in my instructor's leg), swimming off the boat(Causing The Mother to have severe panic attacks) and roller skating (Causing my friend Kelly to have to sit on a hot water bottle for 4 hours).

It's also a little bit how I approach my adventures in eating. Only instead of a metal pole I have a fork.


I love to try new and exciting things, but I have trust issues. Especially when it comes to foods I define as very frightening. Foods that I find provoke my gag reflex.


Foods like sea urchin.


It's been offered to me, and I keep approaching only to have bad visions, and I retreat. There's just something about it I can't seem to get passed. Perhaps I've been tainted by too many bad episodes of Iron Chef, or if I am truly standing by the desire that not all things are meant to be eaten. Whatever it is, I have trust issues.


And I am just not sure I've got the will to jump. Even when no one is looking.

Posted by Foodwhore at January 16, 2006 04:12 PM

I have tried it FW, but am in no hurry to do so again. Read a true story about a top restaurant in the UK, where a lone diner came to the restaurant armed with guide books and took a table. After consulting his books, he ordered the sea urchin which was duly served. When the waiter returned to the table the diner was gone and so was half the shell ~ spikes and all.

Posted by: tankeduptaco at January 16, 2006 05:20 PM

I just blogged about my first time with uni I went and got some sea urchin fresh from the ocean and opened it and put lemon juice on it. It was really good actually sweet and salty. YUM!

Posted by: clare eats at January 16, 2006 05:54 PM

My husband loves the stuff. I'm with you FW; I keep backing away.

Posted by: Sandee at January 16, 2006 06:39 PM

I just tried uni for the first time a week or two ago, and I'll never do that again. Pretty disgusting texture (in my opinion). I videoblogged about it here.

Posted by: Melanie at January 16, 2006 06:46 PM

i thought sea urchin was poisonous? how do you eat it?

Posted by: blackcaesar at January 16, 2006 07:26 PM

SEA URCHIN?
Doesn't seem trustworthy.
Have a snickers instead.
I trust them completely.
So complete is our trust I carry them around on my butt for years.

The Pup

Posted by: the Speckledpup at January 17, 2006 06:48 AM

The first (and only time) I had sea urchin I had no idea what it was...now I grew up eating menudo (tripe soup), kidney and all sorts of other remains...but this was thee foulest thing I had ever tasted. It tasted like a handful of sand from the deep bottom of the ocean. To this day the pain remains. YUCK!

Posted by: crazee peep at January 17, 2006 11:27 AM

hi FW, love your blog. been reading it for a couple of months now. i am asian and i love uni sushi. i could never touch the stuff as a kid when my parents would wolf it down in front of me and my sis. when i finally tasted it, i think the folks realized they'd made a big mistake. --they now have to compete with me for the last piece of uni... i don't know what kind of uni is available there but if the restaurant serves fresh sea urchin, uni sushi is sweet and lovely.

Posted by: mojitodrinker at January 17, 2006 06:49 PM

I had "sea urchin soup" in Barcelona a few years ago. It was served in a half of a sea urchin shell. It was good - like urchin bisque. No idea what was in it other than sea urchin. For all I know it was simply pureed.

Posted by: Sabrina at January 18, 2006 09:39 AM

Nobody I know can stand uni.

Then again, I can't stand unagi, either. Guh.

Posted by: Sigivald at January 18, 2006 01:02 PM

Oh my, we must have been twins seperated shortly after swimming lessons. That is exactly how my lessons felt too! Hey, don't bother with the urchin. There should be one area in life where you don't have pressure - and that should be the food you want to eat!

Posted by: Shrinking Violet at January 18, 2006 01:53 PM

dude, uni is about the only sushi i won't eat. that stuff is like a scoop out of a baby diaper. made me hurl. literally.

Posted by: gaile at January 20, 2006 09:34 AM

I've had it as part of a tasting menu at Pasion in Philadelphia. I enjoyed it, in small quantities. I don't know that I'd want to eat much more, though.

Posted by: Alida at January 20, 2006 09:42 AM

I love uni. Soft and buttery with a taste that is halfway between soft boiled egg yolk and liver. If it isn't fresh it is bitter. I don't get how it could have been sandy unless they didn't clean it or rolled it in sand first.

On another note, THE mother, THE father? That's an odd title or usage that I've only seen once before by someone who was abused as a child. Is that something you've always done?

Posted by: Promenea at January 21, 2006 04:19 AM

i had sea urchin once in the form of sushi. the owner stood by the table and cackled in glee as all members of my party popped their piece into their mouths, our faces turned green, and we frantically looked for an inconspicuous place to spit. sea urchin is officially the foulest thing i've ever chewed (eaten would have been an exaggeration as no sea urchin was actually swallowed).

Posted by: erinisterrified at January 22, 2006 10:20 PM

Great blog, loved the Ranch Rant. Now...sea urchin--I can actually confirm that you're right (how often do I get to say that?). Although at least in a sushi bar someone else has had the joy of making sure they're dead and cleaned before you ever see them. May I be graphic? My first professional (that is, paid, college-level) lab experience was a call from a high school friend to ask if I would help her and her father in his university lab one evening because the sea urchins had just been driven up from North Carolina. In coolers with seawater. And they were milting. The females weren't so bad--they were quietly shedding eggs in their tanks. My friend and I had to harvest the males, which were doing pretty much what you'd think given the scenario. We were provided with expensive high-end lab equipment--a pair of pliers to remove the beak and a soupspoon to scoop out the rest into beakers. The spines weren't hard to avoid--they moved pretty slowly so you could get your fingers between them. Only, they were still waving on the discarded empty shells. Either very cool or very creepy, but either way I have never regretted keeping kosher (not that you have to to avoid an unaesthetic experience with urchins).

Posted by: Debbie at January 25, 2006 12:42 AM
 
Powered by Movable Type 3.15