Dad bets grossed-out son $10 to eat one piece of sushi without making grossout faces

boing
41

Is that a speckled trout head? The upper tooth looks like it.

42

I didn’t actually ask, but it was big. The entire fish was easily 2 feet long.

43

The overpowering taste is the best :slight_smile:

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44

That would be a fairly big speck, but not impossible. And they are abundant. Their flesh is mild and white, and sometimes a bit on the mushy side if not handled right.

45

And that’s the golden rule of parenting; do things for your kids, not for yourself. The tricky part is how we define that. One could easily see this is this playful teasing intended to encourage him to be bolder, braver, or try new things. What the father intends may be good, how he is doing it is really his choice. I personally don’t think shame and fear are healthy parenting tools, but again, I think this is subjective and unless egregious, I try not to judge.

As for him posting the video for others’ amusement or his own, well that’s just the age we live in. I personally don’t post pictures or videos of my kid except to a private, password-protected blog on Bokeh (awesome tool for new parents, btw), but I can certainly understand the impetus to share funny moments.It’s a grey line though - is sharing one kind of amusing video different than another? In this case, is the shaming aspect of the video what crosses the line? Is Howard Davies-Carr a bad parent for posting the Charlie Bit My Finger video? All questions we have to wrestle with these days…

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46

Very much agreed. Especially where broadening a kid’s palate is concerned. What he’s doing here is telling the kid, “this stuff is so extreme, so awful, so intensely gross, that I will pay you ten bucks if you can eat it without vomiting”. That’s the association a kid can make when goaded and teased like this. For all we know, the kid turned around and ate a piece the next day to get his $10 back, but I’ll bet he doesn’t touch sushi until he’s in college, with a public shaming like this out there.

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47

You have, indeed, shared this photo before!

48

It is plain difficult for me to not upload pictures of fish heads. Probably due to my charming personality.

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49

I dunno man. I went salmon fishing off BC, long ago, and our guide kept killing the mackerel and throwing them back, shouting, “get out of here, trash fish!” Apparently they can out-compete the salmon, and taste like cat food.

50

There are more than 30 different species of mackerel, so I wouldn’t be surprised if some don’t taste as good as others. Same thing with salmon - the Pacific and Atlantic types are very different, and even within the Pacific species there is quite a variance of taste (sockeye is delicious, chum much less so). I will say that I’ve had some damn-good mackerel sushi though, so at least some of them are pretty delicious.

As for mackerel out-competing salmon, I don’t think that’s much of an issue; if you’re catching salmon within a mile of shore, they’re not really eating much anyway since they pretty much stop eating when they enter fresh water to spawn.

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51

I remember catching a horse mackerel as a kid, and my dad insisting it was only good for the cat.

52

I live on the Gulf, and the numbers of fish that we now consider quite edible, that used to be considered trash fish is a long one.

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53

Right? I used to know people that turned their noses up at even tilapia (which isn’t great, but good). And skate? That has actually become expensive

54

You’re right. As to tilapia, it is in the same category as farm raised catfish, or salmon for that matter. They’re edible, but also are a weak imitation of what a real wild caught fish tastes like.

55

Here in New England, up until the beginning of the 20th century, lobster was considered such trash fish that there were limits on how many you were allowed to feed your household servants on per week (3, supposedly). Eating it was a mark of poverty.

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56

I feel bad for the boy. He’s been lead to believe (most likely from dad, based on the goading) that sushi is gross. He won’t know for years how much better salmon tastes if you don’t cook it.

In contrast to this kid, our son will eat pretty much anything you plop in front of him so long as mom and dad are eating it, too. The only exception we’ve found to date is spicy Indian, and we’re working on ramping up his heat tolerance.

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57

I remember reading that. I will gladly trade you some of our blue crabs (also bottom feeders) for equal weight in lobsters?

I’m thinking of a trip up there this summer. Are lobster prices still depressed?

58

Besides the cringe-worthy goading, the dad appears to change the terms of the bet once it’s been made. You have to eat this piece of sushi without making a face, oh, and in less than a minute because he only has so much ‘memory.’ The more I think about it, it makes me think of Mary Lynn Rajskub in “Punch Drunk Love.”

It’s obvious that the kid is only doing this to please his parents (gotta love the mom getting her dig in), and the terms of the bet (and what adult bets a elementary school kid $10) are basically, “Here’s a thing you don’t like. Now eat it as if you like it or you lose a week’s allowance. Ha ha this is fun.”

59

After the insanely bad winter we just had (officially the worst on record!), lobster prices are currently pretty high. About $10/lb.

60

Or perhaps Michael Nesmith. “Fish heads, fish heads, roly-poly fish heads…”

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