Oysters

Anthony Bourdain swears by them.  

His first taste of them oysters was in the South of France as a petulant, thrill-seeking, attention-craving child.  In Kitchen Confidential (and also in A Cook's Tour), he recalled this first with much passion, much gusto.  

My first taste of oyster was memorable, too.  

I must have been in first year high school.  My parents -- mother and stepfather -- were such fans of it that one night, they brought fresh ones home.  They tasted weird at first -- salty, slimy, but interesting.  So I knocked one back, and another, and another, and another.  

Post-dinner, I proceeded to watch a video I had rented out.  VHSes were still all the rage then and ACA video.  Promptly, I pushed in my Nirvana concert video (From the Muddy Banks of Wishkah) into the player and plunked myself on our living room floor pillow.  Headbang, headbang, headache.

Yeouch.  Probably the worst headache I had ever gotten in my life.  It felt like a huge mallet pounding, pounding, pounding in my head;  a mallet trying to find its way out from the inside of my temples.  I cried in sheer pain and frustration and bargained with the Lord.  "God, please stop this.  If you make it stop, I will never listen to Nirvana again!"  (Nirvana's music being the devil's music, of course.)

After some more pleading, I threw up my oysters into the toilet.  

After having realized it was the oysters and not Kurt Cobain that was responsible for my suffering the previous morning, I resumed watching my VHS.

Yes!!!