Apostasy

     I cannot eat okra.  As a descendant of hardscrabble Carolina farmers, I am thus a cultural apostate. Imagine a Dutchman phobic of herring, or an Italian scorning pasta e fagiole. Imagine an Irish teetotaler.
     Reference sources say that the geographic origin of okra was in Asia or Africa. This in an error of startling magnitude. The geographic origin of okra was the far back corner of my grandparents' vegetable plot, just beyond the snap beans.
     As a boy I feared being sent there to fetch it in for supper. The burden in this mission wasn't distance. It wasn't far to go, if you cut through the corn. The burden was dread of what my grandmother would do after I returned. An angel in every other particular, she had but one merciless method with vegetables. She boiled the very identity out of them. From okra this process produced a pot of glutinous slime.
     I have a close friend with whom I lunch occasionally. He is a fellow Carolinian, a man of cultured sensibilities and generous nature. I enjoy his conversation and value his observations on life.
     However there is one pebble in the shoe of our friendship: He eats okra.  Admitting that I may be emotionally encumbered by cultural shame,  I think nonetheless that I do not wholly imagine him eating it with a certain glint in his eye, as a schoolboy might eat worms in a wordless combination of boast and dare.
     He does have it fried. This piece of culinary camouflage affords a small reprieve to me. Somewhere, sometime, a sensible cook wanted an alternative to mucilaginous goo. I am not alone in seeing the merit of it.
     Frying also has permitted okra to emerge into the larger world of food styles. It is among the kinds of dishes that may be eaten by people who refer to movies as "film," or by northern emigres who use "y'all" in singular reference. In a list of trendy recipes I found fried okra just above okra parmigiana. Enough said.
     My family viewed my okra problem with affectionate forbearance, as a family may gamely love a child who keeps dubious friends. Perhaps they appreciated my effort to make amends by braving collard greens.  In any case, although they might urge  me to eat my vegetables, they never insisted on okra. I did refrain on okra days from asking for an extra biscuit. Even at grandma's house, forbearance had its limits.
     It would be too much to say that okra has scarred me, but it has made me unsure of myself. My lapse from the ways of forebears has led me to question the purity of my Carolina lineage. I speculate on the possibility that somewhere in the yesteryears of my gene pool there was a black sheep. A New Yorker or some such.
      And so, even in my later years, okra remains on my mind. I have random episodes of wondering about it, as one might wonder who was the first person desperate enough to eat an oyster. I've never told my luncheon companion about all this. Perhaps I should. Perhaps, in deference to the afflictions of another, he would consider ordering something else. Perhaps collard greens.