::A Geek in Korea::

Growing up in southwestern Ohio affords many opportunities for a young man such as myself. Had I ever decided to go "cow tipping", or reenact a seen from "Children of the Corn", all I needed to do was visit my neighbors. I was surrounded by farm land in nearly every direction. One thing it didn’t afford me was the chance to eat fish on a regular basis. I can remember only a handful of times I ever ate fish before coming to Korea.

In the summer, my grandfather would go fishing in Michigan and bring back an excessive amount of frozen croppies, affectionally called "crappies" by the family.  You could say he was a "crappy fisherman."( Har Har). Anyway, while my family owned a stocked lake in Indiana (which we bought from this same grandfather), we cooked fish from it very rarely from what I recall. Usually because the fish were much too small and bone filled to justify the time it took to clean them. This is probably a good thing, as my grandfather used pesticides on his property, including adding clorine to the lake wather and an occasional spraying of DDT for killing insects, (and everything else for that matter).

The only other time I can remember enjoying fish is when the family went deep sea fishing in Alaska for Halibut. This was the only time I went fishing where people armed themselves for self protection from the fish. The shiphands carried guns on their boat because a flapping halibut is large enough to injure people  as it struggles for freedom on the deck of a ship. I caught a fish, as well as my father (I think), and we had it frozen and vacuumed sealed and sent back to our house in Ohio to enjoy later. This was sometime in elementary school.

After that, I can remember no time where I ate fish on a regular basis until I came to Korea. No fish sticks. No "McFish" sandwiches. No trips to Red Lobster or even Long John Silvers fast food restaurants. Nothing from the sea entered my diet without strong protest. I have no idea why. Perhaps it was an abundance of cows in the area that drove beef prices too low to justify buying fish. Perhaps it was the fact that any "fresh fish" had to spend a few days to simply reach Ohio to begin the process of consumption. Whatever the reason, I ate no fish for a long time.

My adversion to fish and other creatures grew. When I arrived in Korea, the smell of fish or anything remotely "fishy" would cause me to gag reflexively. Eating seaweed was beyond my ability. Impossible.

Five years is a long time to live in a culture that eats as much seafood as Korea does. If I hadn’t eventually started eating some fish, I probably would have gotten sick of eating pork and gone crazy, or even vegetarian. While I have adapted my diet to include fish, I’m not an extremely brave eater. For example, I’ve only eaten raw fish once and I found it completely lackluster. I have no idea why anyone would eat a meal of nothing but raw fish.

One thing that raw fish doesn’t have that makes my normal fish eating experience a normally harrowing adventure is bones. The raw fish I had was served without bones, while all fried fish tends to be served whole, with bones.  It’s also very likely the head is still attached, mouth agape, seemingly questioning you as if to say, "Why?"

 I’ve grown used to the fish heads, but the bones still give me problems. When presented with a new fish, I never know how to approach getting the most meat without ending up with something that looks like it was picked apart by Edward Scissorhands.Usually I need as much assistance eating fish as the children in the restaurant do, picking apart the different sections and trying my best to remove the bones.

For some reason, the prospect of accidentally swallowing and choking on a fish bones terrifies me. I examine fish so carefully that I spend more time picking it apart than eating. I’m not sure why fish bones terrify me. I can order fried chicken in this country that is so strangely cut it looks like it was thrown in a trapped door of the Cube. Knowing how to each a piece of fried chicken was something I grew up doing, but fish remains a mystery.