Accounting for taste

Ahoy, mateys. Does "mateys" mean "little mates?" If so, shouldn't it be spelled "maties" instead? Maybe it is and I just haven't gotten that far in my Pirate Lanaguage correspondence course yet. I'm only in Chapter 2 in my Intro to Piratology text, but I've already learned that one should add a little pineapple juice to one's rum to avoid scurvy. Arrrren't you glad I'm stopping this train of thought here before I go way too far off the deep end? Yes, yes you are. Good morning, gentle readers. Here we are on another Monday, fresh from the weekend's festivities. I hope you all ate, drank, and were merry. I once heard that a transvestite's three favorite things to do were eat, drink, and be Mary, but that's really neither here nor there. Where is it then? It has to be somewhere, right? I need to stop this paragraph now before I get even weirder.

Ah, thank you blank space between lines. I feel better now. As I've mentioned in this space many a time, I take after each of my parents in various ways. Some have become more noticeable as I've grown older, and some have been present almost since birth. One important yet often-overlooked aspect of genetics is the passing down of food likes and dislikes.

A large part of this is undeniably due to food exposure. My parents never took us out for sushi because their parents never took them out for sushi, etc. I grew up "not liking" many things that I'd never actually tried, and some of them I actually learned to like quite a bit. For food that I was exposed to, however, there were clear lines of delineation.

In the Klein household growing up, my dad liked certain foods that neither my brother nor I could stomach. The most important item in that category is clearly mustard. My dad enjoys mustard and I hate it, pure and simple. You may have heard rumblings of my dislike for that condiment in the past, or it may be your first time visiting UOPTA. Welcome. My dad also likes asparagus, and I really, really don't like it. My mom, in full-on saint mode, would sometimes make that nasty smelling and ugly veggie for my dad even though the rest of us wouldn't be having any. I just don't like spears, whether in the form of a vegetable or a Britney.

Then there's the category of things that my dad liked and I alone inherited the taste for. First off, we have sour dill pickles. Mmm, I love 'em. There would be a jar of the pickle chips in the fridge that were just for us, and we'd pile them onto our burgers as the other two would make faces. When I was working in my dad's office for a couple of weeks in between jobs, he took me to a place that had a big glass jar of these giant, very sour pickles. We brought one back to his office and cut it in pieces for whoever wanted some. It ended up being mainly just the two of us who kept coming back for more. Good times, good times.

And then there's the biggy (biggie?): the appreciation for spicy foods that I inherited from my dad. While my mom has grown to like somewhat-hot food in recent years, growing up it was just me and my dad tackling spice monster. When my mom would make fajitas for dinner, she and my brother would stay far away from the glorious red sauce that we'd drip all over our loaded tortillas. Mmm, fajitas.

It should come as no surprise then that on a family trip to Catalina, my ears perked up when a waitress told us that the restaurant was famous for their buffalo wings. She came back a little later, and I happily ordered them. "Mild, medium, or hot?" she asked. "Hot," I said. She made a face and replied, "Are you sure? Last guy that got the hot ones almost had smoke coming out of his ears." My mom suggested that maybe I should go with the medium instead, and I begrudgingly agreed.

When the food came, I dove right into my wings. Something was different about these though. I placed it almost immediately: they were as hot as the f'ing sun. I kept plugging away, beckoning the waitress for more water every thirty seconds or so. My dad had one, and even though he can handle a higher spice quotient than me, he said after one bite, "Wooo, these are spi-cy!" They sure were. A lot of people (including my lovely wife) don't understand how eating very spicy food can be enjoyable when you spend the whole time burning, sweating, and sniffing. It's a labor of love, gentle readers, and I loved those wings to the best of my ability. When the burns on my lips felt like they should be upgraded to second-degree though, I hung up my napkin and called it a day. It was just too darn spicy for me, as much as I hate to admit it. For the entire meal, the same thought was running through all of our heads: "What could the hot ones possibly be like?" Though part of me wanted to go back there just to satisfy my curiosity, that never happened.

One might reasonable assume that I learned my limits once seeing that they existed in the world of spice. Oh sure, I stayed away from jalapenos, bought medium salsa as often as spicy, and limited the number of pepperoncinis that I'd eat in one sitting. But being human, I was prone to the occasional lapse in judgment. Guess what? You'll get to hear about my greatest lapse tomorrow. Yes, I'm unabashedly stringing you along.

Enjoy your Mondays, little mates. May all your socks be arrrgyle and all of your movies rated Rrrrrrr. Ooh, I think I just made up a pirate joke that can have three different punchlines: Who is a pirate's all-time favorite late-night talk show host? It can be Jack Paaarrrrrr, Arrrrsenio Hall, or Johnny Carrrrson. Pirates are versatile! I'll see you tomorrow, friends. Remember, you can always write to ptklein@gmail.com if you wish to share anything about anything.