In sheer numbers alone, chicken wings qualify as America's most popular food. Reporters John Kessler and Rosalind Bentley combed the city last month looking for the best of the best — from hot wings to barbecued and Chinese versions. Their favorites were at Da Bomb Wings and the Harlem Bar, both in Atlanta's Sweet Auburn neighborhood. Kessler, who didn't grow up eating chicken wings, and Bentley, who did, compared their reactions to this bone-picking assignment. (For their previous story, click here For their top wing picks, click here.)

One recent afternoon, colleague John Kessler ambled over to my desk in the way he does with a look in his eyes that suggested an idea had just hit him like a thunderclap.

"You know, I've always wanted to do a story on chicken wings, like those 24-hour places. Whaddaya think?"

My thought: It's too hot to think about something so greasy. But more to the point: There's no way I'm going to eat chicken wings in front of anybody who's not family.

For me at least, fried chicken — especially wings — has always been a socially, if not morally, complicated food. Growing up, its imagery was an effective schoolyard taunt, one that could sting like an epithet, as in "you fried chicken-eating ..." Or it was shrouded in shame because to eat it efficiently required pushed-up sleeves and bare hands (highly uncivilized), rather than a knife and fork. And it was a food of economy; if the dinner meat was wings only, it meant other bills were more important that week.

So call them Buffalo, crickets, drummies, whatever — at the end of the day it was going to be a story about eating fried chicken. Lots of it, in public. For the good of the readership. Umph. I suppose. So I signed on, revealing none of my bone-food baggage.

Admittedly, our first couple of forays were hard. What's the appropriate amount of meat to leave on the bone so as not to appear undignified? Are there enough wet naps on the table? It went on this way until about the fourth stop, when I looked across the table and saw John watching me. Here comes the shame again, I thought. Until he said that he'd never seen someone split the two bones of the flat part of the wing into a V.

Just easier to eat that way, I replied, adding that he left far too much behind by not splitting them. Crack went his next flat, and the next and the next.

By the end of the meal there was enough comfort and laughter at the table that I lost myself and pulled a move more reserved for family reunion picnics: I cracked off a little of the charred, crispy gristle and chewed. He followed suit. The world did not end. Dignity remained intact.

And there it was, a lesson learned: Sometimes food can be as freighted or benign as you let it.