To split an eel lengthwise and broil it.
Once I was with a friend who, to my confusion, kept repeating the word “eel.” I started saying it too because eel is, I guessed, an amusing word when repeated many times over. My friend’s insistant repetition of the word, however, confused me. It still does, because evidently we shared a joke at some point which included repeateded use of the word “eel.”
I remembered talk of eel soup, of eel milk shakes, of a cornish hen stuffed with eel.
I did not remember the fixation on the humorous pronunciation of the word.
The eel conversation happened in a car, en route from Boston to New York. We simply added any food or culinary presentation we could think of to the word “eel.” When eel soup was suggested I looked out the window and saw a river below us. We were on a stretch of Interstate that passed over a river or a lake, and I remember thinking that this body of water might have eel in it. I tried to think of ways to incorporate this lake full of eel into the riff of our conversation.
But the fixation on the funny pronunciation got away from me, and I would not know about it now except my friend said “Don’t you remember?” Then she reminded me of the eel soup, milk shakes, and cornish hen — these things I do remember. But not the funny way we pronounced it. I wish I remembered that.
Eeeeeeeel.
