Two things happened when I was vacationing recently in Los Angeles, well, more than just two things happened, but two that somehow required getting me out of my comfort zone. The first was an invitation to fling myself off the 71st floor of the USBank building. Yes, sure, it was inside an enclosed glass slide, but an enclosed slide in which one plummets to the 70th floor on the EXTERIOR of the building, fully 71 floors above the surface of the earth and in full view of the pavement onto which you may play out your final nanoseconds on God’s green earth. While I was willing to endure this potentially lethal ride rather than shame myself in front of family and friends (God, I do so many things for this very reason), I was not happy about it. So when our (complimentary) tickets did not allow us onto the glass death slide, I was spared the embarrassment of having my sister watch as the attendants pried my fingers loose of the entrance thereby sending me hurtling into space screaming (in space no one can hear you scream, but they can tell if you’ve wet your pants). I was able to walk away with my pride in tact expressing my deep disappointment at having missed this awesome death, I mean, adventure.
The second potentially life altering experience was more along the lines of anchovy eating. Maybe not life threatening but just as seriously disturbing. Although it was caviar. I have eaten caviar and enjoyed it once. (For the record, I have never eaten anchovies, as such, and “enjoyed” it) But mostly when I have eaten caviar I have had to resort to scraping it out of my mouth like Tom Hanks in Big.
My sister made a caviar “pie” for her December party (It was her best, everyone said so, and we all can’t wait for next year’s). In what I decided was a show of bravado, I was determined to eat some. The rest of the “pie” was made of chopped egg, mayonnaise, capers and I forget what else, it was all stuff I’d be happy to eat. But then, that layer of caviar. It even looks evil. I was there when that final layer went on and the thing got set onto the table but being polite I didn’t want to be the first to dig in and by the time I got around to thinking about it (the next day), it was gone. Shweeeoo. Life altering or ending events averted.
While the pictures below in no way convey the absolute terror, you can get the idea. Well, the caviar one does.
