Last night at supper, the guys were asking me when we were going to buy fish. It seems that this is the season for fish. And it’s true that some lady keeps driving through our neighborhood with a loudspeaker strapped to the roof of her car trying to entice us with the Spanish version of, “Fish! Fish! Get your fish here!” Sadly (for her) buying fish out of the trunk of a car doesn’t appeal that much to me. Although to be fair…it does seem to appeal to the guys.

So back to our conversation. The guys were all excited about the prospect of eating fish this week. As my mouth started watering a bit at the idea of a good fish fry, someone exclaimed“We can make fish soup!” to the happy agreement of everyone else around the table.

Are you kidding me? They fry absolutely everything we eat, and the one thing they should be frying…they want to make into soup. So I promptly made my feelings known on the subject…which started a lively debate about how good (or bad, depending on your perspective) fish soup was. These guys are never as funny as when we’re discussing food. I’ve never seen a group as animated as they can be when they’re trying to convince you about how good (or again, bad) a certain food is. They’ll practically act out eating the entire meal, complete with facial expressions, hand gestures and everything. It’s quite entertaining. And they can’t comprehend that somehow, you might not possibly agree with their opinions.

Finally one of the guys suggested a compromise. He said that we can fry the body and then cut off the head for the soup. I turned to the kid beside me and told him to remind me that I was going to be busy the day they cooked the soup. That made everyone laugh except for the guy who was the biggest proponent of the fish soup idea. He just gave me the somewhat disgusted “You dumb gringo, you know nothing!” look that I’ve become so accustomed to here. It’s true that I may not know much…but I do know that I’m not going to eat fish head soup anytime soon.

That day seems like a perfectly good Burger King day to me…