This is the story of how Laura had Calamari for the first time. Laura and I had been dating for about a year when we decided to take a weekend trip to Block Island. We went in April, off season. We had the place to ourselves, but not much was open. We had no car, so we were limited to what we could walk to from the port. We stayed at a local inn, and by Sunday afternoon, we had exhausted out options, and had nothing left to do but wait for the return ferry. We had just five dollars left, and needed to eat lunch. There was just one place open, a small seafood joint. We sat down and perused the menu. A calamari appetizer was the only thing we could afford, so I asked her, “do you want to split a plate of fried calamari?”

“Sure!” She said. The waiter came over and we placed our order, and when he left she asked me, “what’s calamari?” You see, Laura was just barely out of the desert and not exactly experienced in the world of seafood.

“It’s squid.” I said.

“Well I’m not eating that,” she said…in her head. Throughout our lives Laura has always had a had a habit of talking to me in her head, sometimes not realizing she wasn’t talking out loud.

Some time goes by and out comes the meal. If you are familiar with this dish, it comes in two parts, there’s the obviously squid parts that are the breaded and fried tentacles, and there’s the not so obviously squid parts that are the tubular body sliced up in to breaded and fried rings.

I dig in, tentacles first, and encourage Laura to start. “I’m not eating that,” she said in her head. “I’ll just have some of these onion rings.” And that is how Laura tried fried squid for the first time.