EWWWWWwwwwWwwwWwwww no thank you. I had a fish stare-down trauma as a child and never recovered
I just want to say we're all proud of you for making it through the dinner. I might have thought it was the ghosts of fishes past come to haunt me course by horror-filled course. Kudos to you!!!
As for me, my name is Maria and I'm a whole fish 'o phobic. It's the eyes, the eyes, the EYES!
Once upon a time when I was a teeny-weeny little child (ok, I was in jr high home alone and school was out for summer) a nice neighbor brought over a fish. If you could call it a fish, because wh-wh-what is that? A flounder he proudly pronounced! I'd never seen one before. (Salmon, why couldn't it have been salmon?) What the heck kinda fish was this? It wasn't like any fish *I'd* ever seen. He dumped it all all full of himself on the kitchen counter telling me it was really fresh, he'd caught it that morning and left me alone with the thing. Mom wouldn't be home for hours so I guess I had to deal with putting this huge bat like monster-y thing in the fridge somehow.
I timidly walked over to the creepy looking thing, with its two eyes staring up from the one side like a bad B-movie, glow in the dark, attack of the 50-foot woman, radiation induced mutant and...it was breathing. Holy craptastic the thing was staring up at me breathing! I touched it--and it moved! (Tiny girly scream!) What to do?! I couldn't let it suffer, I couldn't...hit it with a hammer, but I thought long and hard about the hammer because there was no actual head to chop off or anything easy to identify like that. I went and got the hammer but, well, it was staring me right in the eye--with both eyes.
Bleh! Shiver! What to do?! Ok, I'll confess... I did what every self-respecting scared %^&*less kid would do. I ran out of the house. I took a long walk, slowed my heartbeat, got my breath back and came back home to...you guessed it--a wheezing still breathing fish! Get out the hammer? Fill up the bath tub? Try to fit it in the fridge? (That would mean touching it.) What to do!
By this time I was very ticked at my neighbor who caused all this trouble. Finally, torn and too chicken to choose what to do, I ran out of the house with goosebumps and didn't come back till long after my parents were home. I have no idea what happened to it, for some reason I think mom said it was spoiled from sitting out all day, but I know I never ate it--or any flounder ever since. Bleh - no way!
So kudos Traca, you made it through all the courses! I'm seriously proud of you!