The Higher Culinary Experience

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/opinion/bruni-dinner-and-derangement.html?ref=columnists

This piece about how ritualistic certain fancy-pants restaurants have become made me flinch--"make a memory" of water?--but it caused me to realize how grateful I am to not suffer such eccentricities. The article goes on to explain all the odd things one must do in particular restaurants and how the culture has changed to be so centered around the rituals of food.

(This seemed very related to our current topic of the "Carnivore's Credo.")

I enjoyed his many examples and the colorful language he used in a simile: "I felt like a...bamboozled cheese."

He very much pursuaded me to stay in my happy middle-class food district out of the $245 person meals of the higher up.

Pardon me while I go find a cheeseburger.

A Quiet Life

Maybe we've gotten it wrong all along. Maybe they do have it better than we, we the hearing.

In Mrs. Fortune's class freshman year, we went around the room stating which of the five senses we would give up if we had to. Thirty students: not one said hearing.

We find so much enjoyment in the music, the conversation, the ambience of life. But how many times have we complained about a music station we don't like, a person who babbles incessantly, a thunderstorm that kept us awake at night? How many times have we wished away a semi's belting honk or a fire alarm's eerie buzz? How often have we escaped from a crowd into a deserted room just for a moment of silence?

We resent those noisy, distasteful places that blare fuzzy, awful songs from terrible speakers; we wear noise-blocking headphones to escape the constant whir of machinery. We wish we could get those irritatingly catchy, reproachful songs from our heads (how often do we wish to heavens we had never heard "Friday"?).

A "disabled" deaf person has none of these complaints. No air horn surprises, no dreadful child's wails, no horrific explitives.

It's so quiet, so peaceful to imagine what life must be like for the deaf.

Don't Trust Them!

They call them man's best friend. They call them lovable, adorable, furry.

I think they're awful.

Maybe it isn't fear--maybe it's grown more into a hatred, a loathing vengeance against perhaps innocent canines--but they're awful nonetheless.

I must have been only six or seven years old. My father brought home a puppy, a Shiba Inu. Adorable! Its little brown eyes gazed from a fuzzy, striped black-and-white face. But it was only a demon in disguise.

Not long after it manipulated its way into our home, it began ravaging us tenants with its fits of barking, its snarls, its hungry eyes. I shall never forget the way its nose curled up like bunching fabric caught in a sewing machine, the way its eyes glared out at anyone, everyone!

It was hard enough living with a demon, but no one warned me that they bite.

I came home to find that my gum--my lovely, sweet BubbleTape still in the pink case--was stolen from its countertop home. Dakota, I thought with clenched teeth, heading for said beast's cage. I've no idea how the little monster reached my gum as he was no taller than my knee, but I saw the flash of pink cradled within his paws.

Like any candy-craving seven-year-old, I angrily reached in to grab my chewing joy.

But it bit me. The demon bit me. My hand, penetrated in three pale dents where its teeth had gripped, throbbed and faded like an Icy-Hot.

My father, ever the disliker of animals, came to my aid and went for the beast, but it bit his thumb harder--I still remember the blood ebbing from his thumb into the sink.

That demon was put down soon after, and thank heavens we had it so for it might have eaten me had it been given the chance.

So now I see those little monstrosities, those ones every person likes to coo at, and I twinge in repulse. Some find it amusing to place their animal in my face, those slobbering cheeks dripping like a broken hose, and I can only feel a mix of fear, horror, and need for revenge.

Only recently have I begun to heal from this fear. Only a few times in my life have I ever been able to trust a canine enough to pet its shaggy head. Maybe one day I'll forgive them. But I still see those snarling eyes.