"So you roll them between your hands like this," my uncle told me as we stood waist deep in the ocean a hundred or so feet from the shore. He had found a dark green, bumpy-skinned Sea Cucumber wedged between the rocks of the reef and had plucked it out to demonstrate how to make them explode.
I had just turned eight years old and he was still seven. I looked at him dubiously as he furiously rolled the poor creature back and forth between his palms until greenish goo started coming out of one end of it. Then he threw it high in the air. I held my breath as I anticipated the resulting explosion - imagining the vegetable shaped sea creature to blow apart like a firework.
It did not explode. It simply dropped into the water and sunk to the bottom. I crossed my arms and fixed my uncle with a bored look. He had promised an amazing trick, and I was disappointed. It's not that I didn't have any feelings for the poor abused creature, I really did, but I was also very curious to see if it really would explode.
He tried again. And again with the same result each time. My uncle retrieved the last victim of his failed attempts and with a sly look on his face said, "They must not be ripe enough - but, you can eat them. Here, just suck on this end. It's really good." He shoved the oozing cucumber toward me.
"You go first," I said, looking at him expectantly.
"No, ladies first," he insisted. Just then my aunt swam out to meet us. She was only a few years older, but she was one of the wisest people I knew in my short life. She scolded my uncle and brought us back to have lunch on the beach in front of my grandparents house.
I can't look at a cucumber and not remember that day.
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