美国大学申请Common App话题6Essay范文-Eating Eyeballs

I first became aware of food when I was about six years old. Yes, I already knew that you put food in your mouth, chewed and swallowed, and that it tasted either good or bad. But I wasn't really aware of food until I noted that while my friends had dinner like macaroni and cheese, my parents were making chicken cacciatore. I was crushed; I wanted to be normal. So I retaliated by refusing to taste the wonderful meals my parents would make. I would only agree to try the dishes if my parents would let me eat peanut butter afterwards. My fall back plan was a little odd, as I didn't like peanut butter, so I would usually eat the dinner my parents had prepared after acting dismayed at the foreign sounding name of the dish.

As I grew older, I learned the value of trying new things. I learned that eating food that my friends were not used to made me more comfortable whenever I was visiting someone's home. I would eat almost anything, and my parents trusted me to eat without making ugly faces at unfamiliar food. My manners earned me invitations to adult parties where I could curl up, read, and politely eat my dinner. It got me out of having a baby-sitter, and I was proud to be considered grown-up.

By the time I was thirteen, there were only a few things that I wouldn't eat:

Snails: I thought the sauce was delicious, but my imagination always brought up a picture of some oozing, yellow thing right before I bit into the actual snail.

Fish: Fresh fish is still hard to come by where I live, and I always imagined the smell of a fish market was something much worse than it actually was.

Any organ of any kind: I'd heard too many people say, "Ew, gross," in response to the thought of liver or kidneys to even consider the thought that I might enjoy them.

Despite my prejudices, (I'd never even tried any of these dishes when they were prepared by a good cook), when I was fourteen my parents decided that I was ready to go to France without them along to supervise my manners. They sent me to visit my friend Anne's family. The main point of this trip was to improve my French, so I was under orders to speak only French with my new family. With Anne's family, I traveled to Paris, Privas, Saint Jean de Luz, and Saint Malo. For three weeks, my only connection to the English language were the four books that my mother had allowed me to take (I had wanted more). I always ate what my new family served because I knew that my parents were counting on me not only to speak French, but also to be polite, which included eating what I was offered.

The first couple of meals I had in France were reassuringly familiar: a little bit of cheese, omelet, gazpacho, or quiche. Then Patrice, Anne's father and a marine biologist, grilled sardines the length of my hand for dinner. His method of grilling the sardines was charring them. I had tried charred meat before, and hadn’t liked it. This dinner was charred, a fish, and it was looking at me with an eyeball in a head that I was going to have to eat. Patrice explained that the best way to eat these sardines was to eat the whole thing -- bones, skin, eyes, and all. Since my French was still a little shaky, I hoped that I had misunderstood him -- one of the few times I would have enjoyed feeling stupid. Patrice made it clear, however, that I was to eat the entire, ugly little fish when he picked one up, pointed to it, and ate it in three bites. I still don’t know how he managed to fit that much fish into his mouth.

I forged my way through three of those little fish: eyes, tongue, bones, imagined brains, and all. Then I switched over to the eggplant casserole, a dish I felt a certain fondness towards because I had displayed some knowledge of the French language earlier that evening by saying that an "aubergine" was an "eggplant." My brief moment of fluency had convinced me that I liked the dish, and I became a great fan of squash for the remaining three weeks of my visit to France.

Two days after the sardine incident, I saw little, round, brown things simmering away in a frying pan when I walked through the kitchen. Because they smelled like a particular savory pasta sauce my parents would make, I decided that that they must be mushrooms, and that even though I didn't like mushrooms, at least they weren't eyeballs. The "mushrooms" were served. I took eight, Anne took three, and Patrice took about twenty. The distribution of the food should have made me realize that the savory brown things probably weren't mushrooms (Anne usually eats more), but they smelled so good that I didn't pay attention. When I was on my last one I asked what kind they were; the reply was "mouton." I didn’t know different types of mushrooms very well, but I was fairly sure that there was no such thing as a "sheep mushroom." Patrice must have noticed my confusion because his next word, in English, was "kidney." Oh. I ate the last kidney on my plate and served myself some nice, plain bread and goat cheese, a regional specialty. Later, I reminded myself that I really had liked the kidneys before I knew what they were.

Even later that night, I heard a conversation between Patrice and Jean-Louis, Anne's Uncle. I had come downstairs to brush my teeth and heard them talking in the wonderful old stone kitchen. They were remarking (in French) that I was much braver about food then they had thought I would be. That was a real turning point for me because I'd understood a full conversation in French and I knew that I was doing well on the food front. The two men never knew that I had overheard their conversation, but it has stuck with me up to today. Their remarks made me adventurous enough to try different kinds of fish, crabs, snails (which I now love), liver, a heart, and what I think were a pair of rabbit's lungs. Although some things were better than others (the rabbit's lungs had a rather odd, spongy texture), I still tried them.

I visited Anne's family during the next two summers and had several more food and language adventures. During my last visit, Patrice informed me that I was not only to speak in French, but read it, too. I sadly packed away my English books and picked up a book in French. As it was the fourth Harry Potter book, I wasn't really very miserable at all, and I still find it funny that the French word for "wand" is "baguette."

注：此篇论文写于Common Application论文500字的字数限制规定出来之前。