Yesterday I went for a walk on a beautiful fall day with an intellectually keen and educated international student. We were enjoying the crisp air, walking through the bright fall leaves, and having casual conversation, when the student said out of the blue, “I boiled oats for two hours yesterday, and they still tasted bitter!”
Now, I don’t know about you the reader, but there are 4 kinds of oats that I know of.
- Instant oats – They take two minutes to boil
- Regular oats – They take 5-10 minutes to boil
- Steel cut oats – They take around 2 hours to boil
- Oats that cows eat on dairy farms – Don’t boil or eat those
But then the student said “My friend in the Netherlands say they don’t eat oats. They say there is some poison in them, and that pigs eat them.”
Well, that eliminated option 4. So it must be option 3, but still an odd choice of food for an international student. So I asked “Where did you buy the oats?”
“I got them right over there on the ground. On campus!” she exclaimed quite matter-of-factly.
“Those aren’t oats!” I said with a laugh. “Those are acorns.”
“Oh!” She replied, “I saw they had a nut inside like an almond, I guess we were talking about two different things.” But this time she was laughing, too!