  My dad sent me an email regarding the box of smoked salmon I had sent my mom through the post. "She's a fish nut," Dad said, adding a characteristically mischievious "he-he" afterwards. "She hasn't opened it yet, she likes to look at it. " I can imagine mom taking the bubblewrap envelop and nipping at its corners with her flying fingers until, at long last, she pulls out the boxed salmon and holds it out gleefully before her, arms outstretched and lips curled from ear to ear.
She'll give a gutteral growl, "MMM! " while smacking her lips loudly. You see, my mom is most definitely, a fish nut. When she eats one, she'll savour its white, soggy meat and suck on its bones like a badger. The worst part, or best part according to her, is when she munches on the fish head she saves for last. "It's your loss," she'll say as she bites down on the eyeball and grinds it loudly between her molars. She even loves the foul smell in the fish markets in chinatown; it's that very smell that reminds me of summers in the East Coast and the stinky tubful of shells and crab carcasses we would gather from the shoreline. It's a smell I hate; a smell she adores. I believe it's a trend of hers, this affinty for putrid smells, because she also loves durian, a large spiky fruit the stench of which she once lovingly described to me as "cat poo.
" Yum, mom. I don't hate fish, but I do hate seafood (sushi is an exception). People often look shocked when I tell them this, especially when I'm now living on the West Coast. Unknowingly, friends have set me off to B.C. saying, "Take advantage of the seafood while you're out there" as a last goodbye. I have to smile weakly and nod like I'm happy about it every time. I often wonder how people can eat things that look so much like insects. Could it be the taste that overrides the look, texture, and smell of them? Or are people such devouring carnivours that they'd eat anything that once moved?
After years of being the reason why my family can't order such a "delicacy" at restaurants, I have tried so very hard to enjoy seafood. My aunt in Vancouver had me over for dinner one night and served us a huge plate of giant crabs. I can do this! I thought. Surely there's something amazingly delectable about these things, what with their harmless spiny pincers, bug-like exoskeleton, and appendages of a giant tarantula... My stomach lurched. It has to taste good, it has to... My aunt ripped off a crab's arm and plopped it on my plate. Good god, is it still moving? I must have been staring at it for quite a long time, because my cousin was holding his belly (a result of his Playstation and Xbox) and laughing. Finally, my aunt gave me some crab meat she had just de-shelled herself and held it under my nose. Smiling in an attempt to keep myself from retching, I gratefully accepted it and placed it in my mouth.
It was warm. soft. sickeningly sweet. It tasted like what fish in the market smelled like. Gross. I kept eating, mind you, trying to be polite and all, but my aunt soon remembered my reaction to the giant prawns (with heads attached) she had ordered the last time we dined together and stopped giving me the crab. 
