Octpuses, octopi, octopodes

I apologize in advance for all the exposition into this story, if it's unwanted, skip to the third paragraph...

I think I'll begin my tale with a stroll I took with a fellow foreigner a few weeks ago.  We were walking amongst the outdoor fish markets of Yeosu, when we began to notice all of the dried octopi (my preferred plural, of the grammatically correct trio) around.  This sparked a conversation about octopi.  Robby (who I was with) told me that octopi are the smartest invertebrate, that their intelligence is equivalent to that of a cats' and that they can, for example, watch another octopus solve a problem and learn from that octopus, therefore solving a similar problem in the way the octopus they observed solved it. Pretty intense.

He also mentioned that he thought it would be cool to own an octopus as a pet.  I told him that I had the same thought about a year ago and I did some research on it.  Almost every site on the internet regarding owing an octopus as a pet offered the same advice:  WARNING! DO NOT GET A PET OCTOPUS! Then would follow some horrifying story about owning a pet octopus.

Anyway, the following week, I went walking with my roommate Kayla and we saw a bucket of little octopi.  Before I knew what was happening, a woman grabbed an octopus and cut out its brain. (I would later find out that octopi have 9 brains, well, one large neural clustering at the head as well as 8 neural clusters leading down through each of it's 8 tentacles).  Then, she cut up the octopus into little pieces.  The octopus was all chopped up on her cutting board but it was FAR from lifeless.  It was still squiggling and moving all around.  Then she put the pieces of the still moving octopus into a bowl and served it to a customer.  Basically, I was horrified.  I wanted to cry, but I was too shocked.

Kayla, however, was only fascinated.  She said that we should eat a live octopus, that it should be our goal of the year.  And then somehow, although I'll argue I was still in shock and not in a sane state of mind, I pinky swore that I would do this.  I figured that it would happen sometime next summer and that I'd have about 9 months to wrap my mind around the idea of eating a live octopus.

So we go to work the next day, and Kayla goes and mentions our goal to our Korean co-worker Lydia.  Lydia goes, "I want to see this, let's go Saturday at 2:00."  So I choke, and then I'm all "WHAT?!?  No!  But I need time!  I need to make peace with the octopi community!"

But Saturday at 2:00 it was.  So we drove to the fish market.  Me, Kayla, Robbie, and the three observers Lydia, Jean, and Daisy.  We walked in and I said to myself "Ok, don't name them, don't look at them, just do it."  But I accidentally looked at the fish market lady at the precise moment that she decided to cut the brains out of not one but TWO octopi although I told her that one octopus was way more than enough octopus for me.

Alas, we walked away with our squiggly squirmy octopi (whom I couldn't help but name Steve and Eric), and the time had come.  I had to eat the octopus.  Have I mentioned yet that I'm a vegetarian?  I'm a vegetarian.  Anyway, I stared at it's moving tentacles that contained, in very basic scientific terms, brains (neurons and neural axons, it counts) and I just ate it.  And I could feel it squiggle in my mouth a little bit.  And I was so sad that I was eating my very favorite animal.  But I did it.

And then I asked it for forgiveness and for it not to send its friends out to get me in my sleep because for all I know,  octopi have telepathic powers.  Maybe they hold grudges, maybe this particular octopus was part of the octopi mafia.  I just don't know.  There's just so much that science doesn't yet understand!  I didn't want to take any risks.

So the moral of the story is if you ever want to get me out when playing 'Never Have I Ever' you can now say "Never have I ever eaten a live octopus" and I'll be out...