When we are all so alike

From Oregon, USA
The first time I ate crab in Korea it was raw. It was a slimy, discoloured gray that oozed from the shell. My friends ate up. I took another shot of soju.

The second time I ate crab in Korea it was cooked by my then-girlfriend’s mom. There were three crabs, boiled to perfection. We ate them hot, pulling out the meat with tiny forks – the first forks I had seen in since arriving to Korea 6 months before.
The crab tasted different than the Dungeness crab I had eaten around my grandma’s table.

 
Yet, as we finished and each edged the crabmeat out from under our fingertips, my thoughts weren’t of home, or of the many analogies that could here be made about people, and culture, and how we are really all very similar. No, I raised my head from my plate and asked in childish Korean if, perhaps, was there any crab left?