Serve me up another plate of German fries, but please no liver

When I was in elementary school, my Girl Scout troop went on a camping trip. I don’t remember if we were trying to complete a badge or something (I assume we were) but for one meal, we were all supposed to try something new or eat as many vegetables as possible or some other goal that isn’t really the point of this story.

The point is that about halfway through the meal, my mom (our troop leader) brought out a plate of what she called “German fries.” We thought they were just some ethnic version of French fries, so we greedily accepted them.

After the first plate was finished was when we learned the secret of the “German fries.” All eating ceased when we learned what we thought was potato was actually fried eggplant.

To really understand this story, you have to understand how much of a picky eater I was when I was little. I had just finished my phase of refusing to eat pie, but instead just eating whipped cream on a plate at Thanksgiving. I had never tried eggplant, but that gave me all the more reason to hate it.

Two weeks ago, I was at a party. On the plate in front of me was a mixture of green beans, potatoes and meat. More protein and vegetables than I had seen in the past week. I had no idea what this “meat” actually was. As usual, no one told me the specific cut or even animal of which I was about to eat.

A couple bites in, one of the other volunteers I was with looked up from her plate. “I think it’s liver,” she said before going back to eating.

I lost all my desire to continue eating the “meat.” (Some things haven’t changed 15 years later)

The point of both these stories is that until I knew what both of the foods in front of me actually were, I had had no reason to not like what I was eating. (In fact, over 15 years later, I distinctly remember liking the “German fries.”) It was the words that changed everything.

When I’m called the word for “foreigner” it means so much more than just an identification of my skin color. All the cultural implications of the term would fill my empty plate of German fries. When men force me to make the distinction between “Madame” and “Mademoiselle” they are looking to find out so much more than whether they are addressing me by the appropriate title. (As I’m not married, I’m actually a “Mademoiselle,” but I have a hard enough time getting respect from men here to start with, I try to fake my marital status by age association.)

It is the words that have the power. But in so many cases here, I’m not the one who gets to run the conversation.