Rewrite the main family as aliens trying to blend in with humans

“The All-American Slurp”
by Lensey Namioka

The first time our family was invited out to dinner in America, we disgraced ourselves
while eating celery. We had emigrated to this country from China, and during our early days here
we had a hard time with American table manners.
In China we never ate celery raw or any other kind of vegetable raw. We always had to
disinfect the vegetables in boiling water first. When we were presented with our first relish tray,
the raw celery caught us unprepared.
We had been invited to dinner by our neighbors, the Gleasons. After arriving at the
house, we shook hands with our hosts and packed ourselves into a sofa. As our family of four sat
stiffly in a row, my younger brother and I stole glances at our parents for a clue as to what to do
next.
Mrs. Gleason offered the relish tray to Mother. The tray looked pretty, with its tiny red
radishes, curly sticks of carrots, and long, slender stalks of pale green celery. “Do try some of the
celery, Mrs. Lin,” she said. “It’s from a local farmer, and it’s sweet.”
Mother picked up one of the green stalks, and Father followed suit. Then I picked up a
stalk, and my brother did too. So there we sat, each with a stalk of celery in our right hand.
Mrs. Gleason kept smiling. “Would you like to try some of the dip,
Mrs. Lin? It’s my own recipe: sour cream and onion flakes, with a
dash of Tabasco sauce.”
Most Chinese don’t care for dairy products, and in those
days I wasn’t even ready to drink fresh milk. Sour cream sounded
perfectly revolting. Our family shook our heads in unison.
Mrs. Gleason went off with the relish tray to the other guests, and
we carefully watched to see what they did. Everyone seemed to eat
the raw vegetables quite happily.
Mother took a bite of her celery. Crunch. “It’s not bad!”
she whispered.
Father took a bite of his celery. Crunch. “Yes, it is good,”
he said, looking surprised.
I took a bite, and then my brother. Crunch, crunch. It was
more than good; it was delicious. Raw celery has a slight sparkle, a
zingy taste that you don’t get in cooked celery. When Mrs. Gleason came around with the relish
tray, we each took another stalk of celery, except my brother. He took two.
There was only one problem: long strings ran through the length of the stalk, and they got
caught in my teeth. When I help my mother in the kitchen, I always pull the strings out before
slicing celery.
I pulled the strings out of my stalk. Z-z-zip, z-z-zip. My brother followed suit. Z-z-zip, z-zzip. To my left, my parents were taking care of their own stalks. Z-z-zip, z-z-zip, z-z-zip.
Suddenly I realized that there was dead silence except for our zipping. Looking up, I saw that the
eyes of everyone in the room were on our family. Mr. and Mrs. Gleason, their daughter Meg,
who was my friend, and their neighbors the Badels—they were all staring at us as we busily
pulled the strings off our celery.
That wasn’t the end of it. Mrs. Gleason announced that dinner was served and invited us
to the dining table. It was lavishly covered with platters of food, but we couldn’t see any chairs
around the table. So we helpfully carried over some dining chairs and sat down. All the other
guests just stood there. Mrs. Gleason bent down and whispered to us, “This is a buffet dinner.
You help yourselves to some food and eat it in the living room.”
Our family beat a retreat back to the sofa as if chased by enemy soldiers. For the rest of
the evening, too mortified to go back to the dining table, I nursed a bit of potato salad on my
plate. 
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