This past summer I went to California for two weeks. Before going, I promised myself that in California, I would try new things. As a result, over that two week course, I tried many different foods and went to lots of fascinating places. One new thing I tried was raw oyster, a delicacy.

My cousins had said that raw oyster was better than cooked oyster; I took their word. My oldest brother Tom had went to California about two summers ago and had tried this luxury. It finally came the time for my younger brother Victor, my sister May, and me to put on our brave faces and eat!

Oh gosh, I didn’t want to disappoint anyone by not eating; I didn’t want to appear as if I was a scared baby. Of course, I urged Victor to take the lead. I told him he was older so he had to go first.

“You do the honors,” I told him. My cousin Travis cracked open the oyster with a small knife and told Victor to wash out all the grit with the hose. We watched him pick up the slimy, shiny chunk.

“Wait!” My cousin Julie said. “Katrina! Get the camera!” We decided to wait until all of us had our own individual chunk.

As Travis was “skinning” my oyster, I asked, “Um, how do you eat it?”

“You just chew it a bit then you swallow it,” Travis said calmly, as if it was that easy.

“Just don’t chew it too much or you’ll throw up like Tom did,” added my cousin Chris. Great, that really helps.

“Wait, you threw up?!” I asked Tom.

“Yeah, I just chewed it and kept chewing it, then…” He motioned throwing up. I shuddered.

Before I knew it, I had an oyster in my hand and I was pinching the chunk between my fingers with a disgusted look on my face. I watched my little sister smiling and laughing with her own oyster in her hand. Okay, time to get this over with!

“Okay, okay!” I took a deep breath. “On three. One. Two. Three!” I faintly recall Katrina holding the camera in front of us. I remember hurriedly picking up the oyster chunk, all slimy in my fingers, and dropping it into my mouth.
Okay, I only chew a bit then swallow. Maybe I’ll chew approximately three times then swallow. Oh gosh, it’s bigger than I thought! I can’t swallow it! Ugh, I even have trouble swallowing medicine; how can I swallow this disgustingly big oyster?! Oh no, I think I’m going to throw up, I thought. I cupped my hand over my mouth, ready to catch the oyster when I would spit it out.

“Swallow, swallow. Don’t spit it out!” Tom yelled. “Don’t throw up!”

“Tom, don’t scare them!” Travis reprimanded.

For the sake of trying new things, I swallowed the slimy creature in four slow, slithering swallows. I couldn’t indulge in the delicacy because I was focusing so hard on swallowing each individual chunk. All I was left with was the taste of grit. I guess I didn’t wash the oyster well enough.

I could then see that Victor had finished before me and on his grinning face was triumph. Oh dear brother, you win. You can have all the trophies in the world in this category. I won’t stop you. My sister was still chewing with a worried look on her face.

“May, swallow it,” Tom urged. She just kept chewing. We all laughed at her and her chipmunk cheeks.

“You can spit it out, May,” Julie said. May went to the grass and spat it out in one big chunk. We could not stop laughing and, Katrina got it all on her camera. We showed my parents the video, explained what happened to May and they broke out in hysterics. My mom would not try the raw oyster at all but, my dad tried the cooked oyster.

That’s what you get for taking risks. All in all, it was a fun and funny experience. I never did try the cooked oyster. To this day, whenever I think about eating oyster, raw or cooked, I shudder.