Greg> Maybe I need to sleep on it. Maybe I need a little more. Whatever the problem, the only thing I feel is a bit of upset stomach. We went out to dinner tonight with our shopowner friends. It was a VERY nice time. It was the owner, his wife, their 2 year old daughter, and his sister. The brother and sister came into existence before the current laws against multiple children. This family is just a wonderful family. My wife and I will truly miss them when we leave. While we are looking forward to going home, we are not looking forward to saying "goodbye" to them tomorrow. Sitting outside on the sidewalk outside of their shop many nights reminded me of older America where people used to sit on their front porches and interact with their neighbors. Now, we don't even have front porches. Such a shame. By now, some of you are saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get on with it already. I know there is something juicier in here than all this schmaltz." Well, I wouldn't say "juicier", but it was really not what I expected. So, as we are deciding what we are going to order, Maren and the other ladies went to show the river to the kids. He leaned over to me and suggested a few soup orders. The lighting was very bad as we were outside and it was mostly dark. I looked at the small print on the soup card, looked even more closely at what he was pointing at, stopped breathing momentarily, and I am also pretty certain my heart stopped beating. I mopped the cold sweat off of my forehead and worked like mad to keep my right leg from rapidly bouncing up and down involuntarily. You see, I am a firm believer that pigs would really prefer to keep their brains. What do I need with them? I have my own brains. OK, OK, OK. Stop it. Just stop it right there. That is mean. Very mean. I am halfway around the world and you are making jokes about me having my own brains. Kick a guy while he's down why don't you?! Anyway, my friend said that an old Chinese saying is that eating pig brains makes a person more clever. And I am thinking, the reason it is an old Chinese saying is that somewhere along the line they learned it was a joke played on them by their big brothers. This is very similar to my big brother hiding my nice afternoon snack of plum and saying that mom told him my afternoon snack was a banana and that I had to eat it. That also was very mean. It took me something like and hour and half to put that 'naner down. (I forgive you big bro, but I can still feel that nasty, squishy thing in my mouth!!!). So anyway...he looks at me with poorly veiled humor in his eyes. And to my total amazement, I heard my mouth say, "OK". If I had been outside of my body looking at me, I would have stared at myself with my mouth wide open.
He then said that only he and I would get it and that the wives and sister would get a different soup. He pointed to another. I looked at it and thought, “No problem my wife likes duck. She will eat…” Oh man. He can’t be serious. He is serious. That isn’t duck soup. It is duck KIDNEY soup. Oh wow! Oh, that will never do. But I can’t tell him “No.” That would be rude, and he did say they would like to take us out to dinner and we did agree to go. I did what any self-respecting, yet polite husband would do. I told him not to tell her what kind of soup it was! He laughed heartily.
So anyway, our soup was delivered. It had a lid over it. I opened it up. It looked really good actually. That is probably because it looked like a cup of tea except in a bowl. I thought maybe I had hit it big and the brain part was more blended into the liquid as opposed to being, well, as opposed to being brain. At just that moment, my wife returned. I did something I really shouldn’t have done. I went fishing. Not out on the river, though given a choice…! Nope, I went fishing in my bowl. My wife leaned over to see what had arrived, when even in the dark lighting, she recoiled a bit and said, “That looks like ‘brain’. She then took off her lid, and there was no momentary hope for what stared her in the face could only be described as “kidneys floating in soup”. (That could be a bit for David Letterman’s skit “Will It Float”. If you are ever watching and the object to guess as to whether or not it floats is duck kidneys, bet on them floating.)
So, I finished all my soup! Right down to the last bit of grey matter. Well, I guess technically I didn’t finish all my soup. It turns out that Elijah really likes brain soup! To my credit, I really only gave him the equivalent of two spoonfuls, while I myself finished all the rest. Oh yeah, one more thing. I pulled out some large very dark block looking thing. I leaned over and asked my friend what it was. He wasn’t sure but assured me I was supposed to eat it. I took the plunge and put this very strange thing into my mouth. I bit down and had the distinct feeling that this must be what eating a cork plug must taste like. I tried chewing for quite awhile, but the thing didn’t even really change shape. It just sort of existed in my mouth. I finally leaned over and asked again if I was supposed to eat this thing. He scooped some out of his, put it into his mouth, chewed for awhile and then spit it out. He never could identify it except guessing that maybe it was some sort of Chinese medicine. Oh goody.
Maren finished too. She finished looking at her soup.
Now, about that clever thing. . .
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