User:Adlewhite/sandbox

Note: The following essay was assigned so the students could practice their editing and also consider biases, which is part of their Wikipedia assignment. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:23, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

A Time When I Learned to Like Something
My name is Adrienne, and I am writing this article in response to an English 102 class at EvCC.

Growing up in a big family, as I did, meant growing up with not very much money. As I was one of ten kids in my family, I was faced with the challenge of never having the ability to experiment with my taste buds. Day in and day out, we had peanut butter and jelly, or grilled cheese, or whatever could be afforded on my dad's single-income budget. I had never explored the wonders of fine cuisine, and I was very comfortable with that. I would go out to eat and order one adult dinner pasta plate to split with two siblings of my choosing, and it was an amazing, rare treat.

One night, while out to dinner with my family to celebrate someone's birthday, I was coloring on the paper tablecloth, practicing my beautiful, seven year-old signature, when I looked towards the table next to us, and saw a huge chunk of meat that appeared to still be bleeding. Immediately losing my appetite, I was disgusted. I asked my mom why anyone would ever order anything that looked alive, and being a radical vegetarian, she made some off-handed comment about "disgusting meat-eaters". Never would I ever understand the appeal of a bleeding piece of cow.

As the years passed, my siblings and I grew up and began to have our own appreciations. My older brother loved to be the "weird-one", and do things he knew would gross my mom out. We went out to eat one night, and feeling very empowered by his new job as a cashier at McDonald's, he ordered a steak, cooked rare. This meant nothing to me until it arrived at the table and the nightmarish food I had seen years ago had once again appeared, this time at our table. My appetite was ruined, as was most of my family's, and I vowed to never touch that thing in my life.

Flash forward a few years, and I was in high-school, dating a man who would later become my husband. His family was having a Saturday night barbecue with all of the average, southern staples for a summer night, but along with these, I saw it. Steak. The food I had avoided for so long was haunting me again. "This is easy." I thought, "There are so many other things to choose from." I piled my plate with mashed potatoes, green beans, and a piece of watermelon, and my father-in-law turned to me and said, "You better get some of the good stuff before its too late!" and laughed kindly as he placed a piece of steak on my plate. There was nothing I could do. I was trapped with my husbands entire family watching me eat. I tried to slip little pieces to my husband, for him to eat, but he refused. He was offended that I didn't love his dads food, but he could never understand how much it appalled me. I ate around the steak, but people began to notice. The jig was up. I had two options: One, to offend my father-in-law, or two, to suck it up and put the bloody piece of flesh in my mouth. Very slowly, I cut off a tiny piece from the enormous slab in front of me, closed my eyes, and opened my mouth. What came next was a shock. I chewed, swallowed, and waited for the revulsion to overcome me, but it didn't. My mouth was watering. Before I knew it I was cutting off another piece and testing it again, to make sure I wasn't going crazy. Much to my surprise, I wasn't.

What I had spent so much time despising from a distance, became the meal that I craved above all else. I thought I knew everything about how carnivorous and disgusting it was to eat a juicy piece of steak, but was very hesitantly disproven. In an article in The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert says that "One way to look at science is as a system that corrects for people’s natural inclinations."and I agree entirely. My natural inclination was to be abhorred by the idea of steak, but the amazing taste and feel of it, and my body's reaction, quickly corrected my bias.

Thank you for visiting my page!
 * 1) Jump up^ Kolbert, Elizabeth (2017-02-20). "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2018-01-14.