You Can Tell a Fish Head Anything You Want To

This is the story of how I momentarily lost my identity in the seafood aisle at Phil-Am.  I was looking for Chinese chives, which incidentally I never found.  What I did find was this:

Yes, I found myself completely surrounded by fish heads.  Being who I am, I began to smile ever so slightly and took out my phone ever so sneakily.  I had myself a fish head photo op right there in the seafood aisle at Phil-Am.  Should anyone have asked me what I was doing, I was going to tell them I was writing a review of the Filipino grocery story for my food blog, which is true (but this is not it.)  What I wasn’t going to tell them was that I was also planning to text those fish head photos to all of my extended kin, which I proceeded to do.  Afterwards, I began to feel a little bit weird about having done that.  I confided in my husband, which is what I do when I start feeling weird about myself.  This is what he had to say, “Yes, that is kind of weird, but it also seems like something you would do.”  Thanks, hubby!

What I am not telling you is that there is a backstory.  When I was a child, my brothers, my cousins and I used to sing a song called “Fish Heads.”  We sang it all the time.  It was basically our childhood anthem.  So when I saw all those fish heads, I immediately thought of my family and how much I missed them.

All of this thinking about my family got me to thinking about that song.  I wondered where it came from, why we sang it.  I mean — it was a pretty weird song.  I got to prowling around the internet on a quest to discover the truth about my identity.  What I found was pretty disturbing.  What I found was this video*: “Fish Heads” by Barnes & Barnes.

 

After watching that video, I had these thoughts in the following order:

1. I had no idea my family was into psychedelics; they always seemed so straitlaced!
2. Who would teach this song to children?!  (obviously, my uncles)
3. This song is kind of racist.
4. My god, what kind of people are we?!

I was sitting in my desk chair having a momentary crisis of identity when it occurred to me.  I knew what kind people we were:  fisherpeople!  My uncles are serious fishermen, and their medium just happens to be fish heads.  I could totally see them, twenty-something, back in 1979, seeing this video and thinking this was the best thing they’d ever seen.  Finally, someone who got them!  I have no idea what they were thinking about the O word back in 1979; I have no idea what anyone was thinking about that back in 1979.  I am pretty sure those lyrics would not pass muster today.  I am also pretty sure I never heard them before seeing this video.

And that, my friends, is the story of how I momentarily lost my identity in the seafood aisle at Phil-Am.  Crisis momentarily averted.  This story is also the inspiration for yesterday’s Badly Drawn Comic: Saturday Afternoons at Our Place.  What makes your family unique?  

*HELP!  If anyone can tell me how to embed a video without having it appear as the featured picture in the WordPress Reader, I will be eternally in your debt.