Some time back, I told you folks about Saturday Night Nausea, Part I.

Well, this is Part II.

Ethel fried up some gator. Yes, alligator. I understand that Yankees don't eat gator - well, neither do regular old Southerners; I suspect that more gators have eaten Southerners than Southerners have eaten gators.

But Cajuns are not your normal, everyday Southerners - they are of French derivation (both genetically and culturally) and everybody knows what French folks eat - Frenchies will pay extra to eat snails; they shell, cook and serve up as a delicacy something that you'll wipe off if you get any on you.

So I suppose that, when the Arcadians (say it really fast, and you'll understand where the word comes from) arrived in southern Louisiana from Canada, they probably looked around and said "Nope, 'tain't no snails here -but look! There's crawdads and alligators! Those should be disgusting enough for us to eat!" 

(In Francois, that's "Boulleibaise! Fishy-sois-sez-vous les Legion Etrangere! Parlez-vous los craw-le-dads?"; however, this includes lots of nasalized vowels and a bunch of silent consonants; in fact, most of the words themselves get dropped, so when spoken, it all comes out as "Zheh-snuh-voo? Oui!").

At any rate, I found that I can't eat alligator. In fact, I'm finding out that I can't eat quite a few things - I've loved Ethel's grilled salmon (pronounced "sa-mun", so it might be a French word) since the first time she cooked it for me, but now I can't eat it any more. I can eat fried frozen fish products - I can even eat Captain D's - but anything that actually smells fishy makes me sick to my tummy. I'll wind up standing over the toilet, and I'll hurl SOMETHING - it might just be my gall bladder, but SOMETHING's coming out.

I don't know what happened, but I suspect that it's age. Not too many years ago, I could eat anything and withstand any sort of gyration, and never have a problem (well, there was one deep-sea fishing trip that turned me green around the gills, but that affected most everybody else on board, as well).  I had a cast-iron stomach; I could eat no matter what was going on around me or inside of me.

But a couple of years ago, I climbed on a ride at an amusement park with Silas - then I crawled off, and found a park bench, and laid there waiting for the world to stop swinging around like that. And now certain smells can set me off, as well - no, not "certain" smells. Fishy smells. Oh - and I can't eat apples before I go for a run.

Good gracious - when did I get FRAGILE?