It was one of the ducks. Daffy Duck. Donald Duck. Count Duckula. Or maybe it was a chicken. Or a goose. I'm not quite sure, but it was definitely fowl. There was a bill — an orange bill — and I can remember the corncob gliding across it like a platen methodically moving left to right on a typewriter. Then — "DING!" — rotate the cylinder half an inch and start again. Repeat until the cob is kernel free.
Made sense to me. I attacked the cob like I was writing the great American novel. Furiously eating row after row of sweet, delicious corn. No one ever told me otherwise. No one stopped and said, "Hey, Four-eyes, you're not a celluloid chordata!" Maybe I should have figured it out when I stopped getting invited to barbecues and clambakes (there were lots of clambakes in West Kentucky), but I didn't. I was too busy picking pieces of corn out of my teeth.
The other day during dinner I paused halfway through my bowl of homemade turkey chili, eyed the corn-on-the-cob peacefully resting on my side plate — unaware of what fate had in store, stretched my mouth muscles, and then attacked like a Great White Shark. After the first two rows were devoured in in a blur of saliva and kernels, I looked up to see my sister staring at me, aghast, with her mouth open in disbelief.
"What is wrong with you?" she asked.
"Whmmpphhtt?" I said as pieces of corn flew across the table.
Now I know that there is a right way and a wrong way to eat corn. My way is the latter, but it's a lot more fun.
R
No comments:
Post a Comment