Soup (part 1) - Times I Could Have Died (or felt like it)

     Continuing on the subject of things that could have killed me, I give you soup. Yes, soup. I never said I was smart.




     At some point in my childhood in Indonesia, I was read the story "Stone Soup".

     You may have read it too. For those of you that aren't familiar:
    

In "Stone Soup", a stranger comes upon a poor village. The people there are destitute and regard the stranger with a suspicious eye. The stranger walks into an inn and inquires about a meal. The innkeeper tells the stranger that they have no real food to offer. The stranger responds that all he needs is a large pot, water to fill it, and a fire. After getting the water boiling, the stranger pulls out a magical stone from his pocket and announces that he will be making his favorite meal, stone soup. After dropping the stone in the water, he declares that there will be enough food for everyone. Called by the promise of food, the rest of the villagers come out of their homes and gather around.

     The stranger tells the villagers that stone soup is delicious, but even better with some cabbage. A villager offers up a cabbage, the only piece of food he had, and the stranger adds it to the pot. The stranger continues to request more ingredients, one at a time. Each time he says that the soup is already delicious, but will be even better for it. Each villager contributes something; in the end all manner of vegetables, meats, and herbs have been added to the pot. The entire village enjoys a delicious hearty meal and thanks the stranger for the use of his magical stone. The stranger then reveals that it was an ordinary stone all along.

     You may have also been read a similar book entitled "Yuck Soup" (I was).

      In "Yuck Soup", the author takes the story of "Stone Soup" and tweaks a bit to make it more appealing to first graders. There are no poor villagers, just a bunch of silly hungry monsters having some fun in a distant land. There is no noble stranger, just a bunch of silly hungry monsters having some fun in a distant land. Instead of vegetables, meat, and herbs, the monsters use ingredients that ramp up that "yuck" factor, like car tires. The story is basically that of monsters saying,

     "Hey! I'm hungry!"

     "Me too!"

     "Let's make some soup!"
     "Yeah! Let's put some soap in it!" 

                   *pause for all the little kids to say "eeeeeeeewwww!"*

     "Mmmm! And tires!"

                    *pause for all the little kids to break into giggles and say "eeeeewww!"*

     Of course, the message intended by both of these books is one of cooperation. If you all work together, you can achieve a common goal. You might even have fun doing it.

     That is not the message I got. The teacher had not exactly bothered to explain to 5 year olds why the stone not being magical in "Stone Soup" was a big deal. I personally left story time feeling like I'd been gypped by the author.

     "There was absolutely no need for that last twist," I thought to myself,

     "That doesn't even make sense. I don't get why the stupid villagers didn't just make soup to begin with! There must have been a reason, so the stone must have been magical."

     It wasn't until after hearing the story of "Yuck Soup" that it all made sense to me. Suddenly I formulated the purpose of the previous story. The stone hadn't been magical at all! It wasn't the stone!

*wide eyed*    .....You can make a fucking soup out of ANYTHING.

     My 6 year old mind had decided that, clearly, there was some kind of special science that applied to only soup. I wasn't sure how this science worked, but apparently absolutely ANYTHING could go into a container of boiling water and make something both edible and delicious. My friend Heather and I became obsessed with making Yuck Soup.


     Heather would come over and we would immediately change into our swimsuits and go out to the backyard. We'd play around in the pool for a while until we were sure my parents were some place out of the way. Then, we'd run inside to the kitchen and get some sort of container. Not being very tall, sometimes we would have to use a Styrofoam cup. If we were out of cups, we used my plastic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles backpack.

     In Indonesia our tap water was fine for showering or brushing teeth, but questionable for ingesting unless it was boiled. The drinking water was delivered in jugs then put into a dispenser, similar to an office water cooler except it also had a hot water tap. Since I wasn't allowed to use the stove yet,  I would take the container to the water dispenser. The water from the dispenser was hot, but by no means hot enough to actually cook something.

     We'd race back outside with the water, put it on the brick next to the pool, and search for more ingredients to put in our Yuck Soup.

     "A Stone? Yeah! Of course! I'll just pull this one out of the yard. . hmm. . it's a little muddy. No problem! I'll just rinse it off in the pool we just peed in! Yeah!" 

     "How about some grass! Sure! And a leaf or two from that plant-that I haven't tasted yet-yeah!"

     Anything we added from the kitchen was procured one at a time. We snuck through my house like bad ninjas, dripping wet in brightly colored swimsuits. We grabbed watermelon, ramen noodles, chocolate sprinkles, the juice flavors I hated, frosting, and eggs. Raw. runny. EGGS... and their shells.


     Once we were satisfied with our concoction, we'd leave our open conainter out to stew in the hot tropical sun while we played in the pool a little while longer. It was always important to squeeze in this last bit of pool time; for some reason we never felt like swimming after eating Yuck Soup. 

Heather and I would come back to our container, styrofoam deformed with heat, backpack steamed up, and with more ingredients in the soup than we had actually added. The sweet ingredients lured fire ants to explore our concoction; lucky for them, the container was sitting on the ground. To the ants that made it to the edge of the container, it must have looked like heaven. The sugary smells! The green leafy debris perched upon pillowy clouds of egg foam! Surely the ant gods themselves sculpted this place for us! Aaah such a succelent brew to drown in!. . Ants are bitter, did you know that? I'm just glad it was mostly ants, and only the stray mosquito here and there. 

     I have no idea how my parents didn't discover and end this horrible playtime game. Yuck Soup died when Heather said she didn't want to put eggs in it anymore (this may have had to do with the time she went home early and threw up). From that point on, we just made watermelon juice, ate frosting out of the tube, and remained blissfully ignorant of exactly how many salmonella/food poisoning/constipation/diarrhea/malaria/dengue fever/tapeworm/whipworm/pinworm/hookworm/flukeworm/HIV/cholera/polyurethane bullets we'd dodged.