By Gretchen Schloesser
“Don’t. Touch. Anything.”
Jerp twisted his head toward the voice and pulled his appendage away from the marble statue depicting one of the weirdest creatures he’d ever seen. Two legs and only one tiny tentacle between them? Humans were strange.
All six of his mom’s eyes stayed locked on him until his tentacle reached the ground. “Look with your eyes, not with your limbs.”
Jerp rolled his eyes. Being “sick” on the day of his final Earth exam hadn’t resulted in a make-up test like he’d planned. Instead, his teacher had insisted on a trip to the Earth Museum and a five-page essay about humankind. Plus, his mom had decided to come with him. His mom.
Satisfied, she unfolded a large paper and held it between two tentacles. “Let’s look at the map.”
Ugh. All they had to do was follow the floating neon arrow overhead.
She traced a line with a third tentacle along the paper path. “Come along with us on a journey through a human’s five senses.” She frowned. “Only five senses? Hmph.”
“Ugh,” Jerp announced. “The Earth Museum is so lame.”
Six eyes homed in on him again. “Passing your Earth class may be lame, but you will graduate, do you hear me? Besides, aren’t you the least bit interested in the”—she paused to skim the map—“Beanie Babies? They’re rumored to be so valuable that humans would use them as currency. There’s a room full of them here. You can even touch them.”
“Whatever.”
His mom suppressed a gurgle, a sure sign of her annoyance. She turned to the sculpture in front of them with a frown. “Humans were strange-looking creatures.”
Jerp followed his mom down the hallway to the first exhibit: Sight.
“What is that?” Jerp waved a translucent tentacle at a brown oval on display.
His mom squinted at the display sign. “A po-tah-to. It was a rudimentary weapon grown underground and fired from a cannon at one’s enemies. Early Earth documents suggest soldiers would consume it during extreme famine.”
Seriously, could Earthlings be any grosser? Eat something not grown in a lab?
Their stops through “Touch” and “Scent” were even more anticlimactic.
“Any idea what you are going to write about?” Mom asked.
“Five reasons I’m amazed that humans aren’t already extinct.”
She hooked him with a glare, like only a mother could. “They are critically endangered. You shouldn’t wish extinction on any species.”
Great. Now his mom was a human activist. Couldn’t they work on saving the space whales instead? At least they digested space junk.
The auditory portion of the museum wasn’t the worst, though he’d never admit that to his mom. They walked through a hologram of someplace called the Amazon rainforest, with chirping insects, twittering birds, and pattering rain—which he’d been interested in when they’d read about it on their school tablets. The next hologram showed a sandy wasteland with towering pyramids where the grunts of nearby camels echoed through the room while wind whistled and picked up tiny granules from the ground—samb? sant?—and a wave of the tan particles danced around. Almost realistic.
Still ignoring the overhead arrow, his mom consulted the map. “A tasting room next.” Her large body jiggled in excitement. “I wonder what food we get to try.”
Jerp rolled his eyes. “Whatever it is, it’s gonna be disgusting. I’m definitely not eating one of those poo-tah-tee things. If it wasn’t grown by a scientist, it’s not going in my mouth.”
Mom gurgled her displeasure and Jerp slithered into the next room behind her.
“Welcome!” squeaked an alien with “Utskho” on its nametag and long, feathery wings. “Since the remaining humans are housed in the intergalactic zoo, we don’t know for certain what their original food tasted like. However, our scientists have done many retrograde analyses of the samples found on Earth, as well as consulted early writings and descriptions. All items are safe to be consumed.” He let out a shrill chortle. “Everything was grown right here in our laboratory, as it should be.”
Mom glided to the first booth. “Doom-plings,” she read. “While the fillings varied from region to region, nearly every culture had some form of this dough-wrapped delight.” She handed Jerp a round white dumpling with a scrunched knot on top and several folds radiating out. “This one is from a place called China.” She sucked it up. “Mmm.”
Following her example, Jerp tossed the entire thing into his mouth. Surprisingly flavorful. Some sort of meat with a spicy aftertaste. Definitely better than his mom’s sluggy noodle pie.
The pit-zah at the next station wasn’t quite as good. Too stringy.
Warm bread was strange, but good, and the cold cream of ice made his head tingle but tasted sweet. Delicious, actually. His mom enjoyed the bitter coffee drink, while Jerp had a glass of soda—which had apparently always come from a lab and not the—bleh—garden.
Mom tapped one tentacle against her chins. “I wonder if we could download one of these recipes. Your father would love doom-plings.”
They stopped at the last table, and Jerp handed his mom a yellow shell filled with an assortment of red, green, yellow, and brown before taking one for himself.
The crunch ricocheted throughout his mouth, and the explosion of spices and flavors burst on his tastebuds. Jerp shoved the rest of it into his mouth, then glanced at the sign.
A taco, huh?
He could probably write five pages on this alone. When his mom’s back was turned, Jerp snatched a second one, savoring the whole thing in a single bite.
This was what he would write about. The tastes of Earth.
Food—Maybe humans weren’t so crazy after all.
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