You Can Tune a Piano But You Can't Tunafish, Because It Stinks Way More Than a Piano

Lately I have been enjoying a delicious tuna salad whipped up by me, myself, and Val. I know that it does not require warming in the oven or heating in the microwave, but I must say it has recently been a staple on my go-to menu.

Hick won’t eat it. M-O-O-N! That spells Hick doesn’t like tuna because he used to work with an old man down at his place of employment at Tower Grove and Chouteau who ate a can of tuna every day for lunch. No frills. No ingredients. Tuna. From the can. Perhaps he had crackers with it some days. Anyhoo…Hick had to work up close and personal with this guy, moving office furniture from the basement to the floor, cleaning out drains, repairing machines that make saw blades out of rolls of steel. He did not appreciate breathing in tuna fumes. If he had it his way, he would have worn a yellow HazMat suit or one like those evil government doctors who tormented Stu Redman in The Stand. I even have to put my used tuna can in a Ziploc bag before I dispose of it in the wastebasket.

Yes, lately I have been liking my tuna salad. So much so that I am willing to forgo my usual school lunch of half a cold hot dog on bun and a snack bag of assorted chips. However...tuna salad at the teacher lunch table is a recipe for disaster.

All year (and last year, too) we have been subjected to the ichthyological menu stylings of Jewel. I suspect she scales it and poaches it between the lunch bell and the tardy bell. People sniff and turn up their noses, but nobody really says anything to her. Few folks want to raise a stink. Except for Jewel. So we grimace and bear it. Turn up our snooty snouts and mouth-breathe until the bell.

On the other hand, a congenial member I’ll call Sweet Alabama Beige LOVES fish. She said she looked forward to Friday suppers when she was a kid, because they always had FISH. Last week she brought her lunch and had not even made it to the cafeteria yet when she was accosted by Tomato-Squirter, my sometimes friend, sometimes nemesis, and always relative who doused me with seeds one day upon taking a bite of her salad. “WHAT are you cooking? That stinks! I don’t think I can stand it! It smells like you buried it and dug it up.”

Poor Sweet Alabama Beige! She said, “I thought it smelled good.” She turned off the microwave in the teacher workroom and carried her plate to the table, where the abuse continued. I believe her dish was salmon patties, or salmon cakes as we called them around Val’s childhood kitchen. We had them often. Tasty. Made from salmon given to us fresh from the cannery by my uncle who lived in Ketchikan. I never noticed the smell.

No, it wouldn’t do to take my tuna salad to the teacher lunch table. Val is no Jewel.