ecovlke's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 14: Soylent Green Is Brain Food Chapter 14: Soylent Green Is Brain Food Well, after that little bit of tribal history, let's get back to my childhood. Here is a little number from 1969. I had just finished dinner. We had had fish, much to my youthful tastebuds' dismay. To try and counter the negative aura, which I had affixed to the fish because of the smell, my father tried a psychological approach. Which is to say that he tried to appeal to my youthful hunger for knowledge by offering up this seafood as some sort of mind-expanding experience. Yes, it was the old urban legend of "Fish Is Brain Food." Fascinated with the idea of expanding my IQ points by merely holding my breath while I swallowed, I ate the fish. A lot of fish. Head, gills, fins, scales. Feeling quite smart after this , I loaded up a cardboard box with my little green army men, and headed for the dirt piles located in the field behind our house. Before I could deploy my little green plastic warriors on their mission, I was surrounded by the bane of my childhood existence. The big kids from down the street. The very same ones who either beat the hell out of me for sport, or made me eat things not normally associated with the human diet. They were at the dirt piles to smoke the cigarettes that they lifted from their parents. Well our meetings usually started with them asking me a question. Which in turn it seemed I usually gave the wrong answer. The wrong answer according to them at least. Tonight's question was, "What did you have for dinner?" I thought how could I get this wrong. I had just ate, and not only that, I had eaten Brain Food. So I smiled and said fish, phrasing my answer in the form of a question just in case I was wrong anyway. Their response, "Fish eh?" "Yes. Fish," I said proudly. Not knowing when to quit I added, "It's brain food." Oops. "Brain food eh?" was their reply. "Gulp" was mine. Followed by their, "So if you ate fish, and it is brain food, uh...what is 11 times 11?" Oh shit. I sat and I pondered and I prayed. I pondered if I could out run them, and prayed that maybe if I couldn't, they won't be too rough on me. So then the fish kicked in. A brainstorm. I looked up at them and said, "I could tell you if I had a piece of fish." Needless to say no matter how clever it was for a six year old, these junior high kids didn't find it so clever. I'll skip the gory details, and say at least they didn't make me eat my little green army men. 7:03 p.m. - 2001-09-19 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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