6.03.2007

A weird near-cannibalistic experience

I bought sardines today, something I do not too often. I tend to eat them whenever I get some private time to myself. It's an odd thing to say the least. It's not as if I hate sardines, they just aren't something I can eat on a regular basis, and yet I probably would buy some every time I would go the grocery store ending with an uneaten stack for months, and they, one faithful day, the stack would disappear!

So as I opened the canister and sat at my dinner table to eat, I started to get lost in my head as I was left alone to my own odd ritual. I ate one...two and finally three of the four sardine bits when I remembered something my french teacher in my second year of high school once said. He had explained that the spine left in the sardines were a great source of calcium and even mimicked the feeling of eating the spine as he told the story. So with that in mind, I took the last of the sardines with my fork, meticulously dissected it until I could recover the spine. Then, I used my fingers to take it out and observe it. I lifted it towards the light, and just as I was about to eat it, I turned to my right.

What I saw crept me out a bit. It's important at this point to mention that my dinner table is framed by two aquariums. One of them contains a red fish and the other eighteen tropical fish. As I held the spine half-way into my mouth, I caught a glimpse of the red fish, and turned to my left to watch the tropical fish swim around. Something felt weird, I felt barbaric. I felt...cannibalistic...