The New Theory That Could

I have a new theory. Caution: This is based purely on a couple of anecdotes, and has no scientific merit - yet. But here's the thing - if it proves to have merit, I want credit. Kinda like a Think Tank or something. Which reminds me of Grad school, when a classmate and I decided we wanted to form a Think Tank Think Tank, a company who would tell Think Tanks what to think about.

We made friends after my checkers program beat his checkers program in our Artificial Intelligence programming class Checkers Tournament. He was the class T.A. (Teaching Assistant) and he knew that the only reason mine won was because his program had so many possible ways to eliminate my last remaining piece (the other pieces having quickly walked right into a quick death) that it ran out of time (there was a five-minute time limit).

So I knew that the technical paper I had to write about my checkers program - which he would read - would easily earn a failing grade if I tried to lie or defend it for being anything but an assignment barely completed on time (and sorely lacking an early strategy - let alone an end game strategy) after staying up late the night before the tournament. It was bad enough that I was going to get a better grade than him because much of the grade depended on how the program fared in the tournament, and I made it to the semi-finals before finally coming across someone who had programmed an end-game strategy that accounted for the diminishing time.

So I wrote a short story called "The Little Checkers Program That Could." I figured if I could make him laugh, he wouldn't slap an F on the paper. I threw in the required technical information, but kept the humor in there too. And it worked. I not only passed the class (and learned to love LISP, a programming language using only parentheses - which led me to start writing emails in LISP (kind of like how I'm writing now)), but it also reminded me of just how much I still need to be a writer.

So anyhow, back to my theory. I believe that Indian girls who grow up unable to tolerate spicy foods are more likely to marry white men, specifically white men who love really spicy food. And I don't just mean spicy for white folk, but 'ask for a chili pepper to accompany the meal' spicy.

Looking at it at a psychological level, perhaps Indian girls are attracted to people who come from cultures that don't traditionally eat spicy foods, with the hopes that they can - some days - eat nothing spicier than ketchup. Or perhaps they wish to please their parents and thus find someone who will fill the perceived shortcoming ("I don't like spicy food, but meet someone who does"). Or they believe that the spiciness-affinity will be a bonding point for them ("Mom will love cooking spicy food for him, once she gets over the fact that he's white").

So all you Indian moms and dads out there who are so worried about your children getting too assimilated into American culture, here's my advice to you. Teach your kids to handle Indian food. Or if it's not something you believe you could or should change, perhaps this information will help you be better prepared as a parent, kind of like the test that women take when they're pregnant to predict for Down's Syndrome.

I wonder if I could get some funding to research this theory further...