I don’t remember eating bagels until I was at least a teenager.
They weren’t a big thing around my East Tennessee hometown. White bread? Yes. Cornbread? Hell yes. Biscuits? With every meal if possible. But bagels? Not so much.
The first time I had a bagel, I wasn’t entirely sure what I thought of it and my very first question was “How do they make it shiny and chewy like that?” It was a while longer before I found out that the answer was “They’re boiled.” At the time, that seemed a little weird to me, but I wasn’t going to complain.