Q:

Growing Avocado from Pit

I’m no gardener nor do I have a “green thumb”. I found this pit inside an avocado that I cut the same day that my 8yr old son brought home, what looked to be, a successfully germinated pinto bean from science class so I got inspired. I named the pit Seymour and went online. The Internet said peel the skin off the pit but there were so many white strings on it I didn’t take all the skin off. One end had a stick coming out of it so I put that end up thinking it was a tree and the other end had thick white tentacles with tiny white things on them so I put that end in the water. The white strings outside the pit were drying so I covered them with wet paper towels every day. The little white things, that were on the big white thick tentacles, were turning brown and the stick wasn’t doing anything - but the thick tentacles in the water were drinking almost half the jar of water every day and at was exciting! But nothing else was happening -
Thinking I confused the ends of the pit, I flipped it. The end of the stick was dark black and dry so I trimmed it to where I could see a little lighter color dot in the middle of the stick, I took off the rest of the skin and cut off the strings that were completely black and dried up. I put the stick and the strings in the water, and the tentacles up in the air. 
Still not much is happening with Seymour - He’s drinking but not as much as when his tentacles were in the water. The excitement of adding so much water to the jar every day is gone; some days the tentacles have a slight light greenish appearance as if they will start turning into a “branch” then they go back to being white. The little white dots that were all over the tentacles are dark brown. 
Is Seymour slowly dying or dead? Am I confusing which end to put in the water? Or is Seymour, the seed itself, confused? I’ve uploaded some photos but I’m not sure if they added or not. 
The only thing I haven’t tried is to drop the entire seed in the water - HELP!

A:

The pit is shaped like a pear. The flat part is where the tap root emerges, and you can see short branching root hairs.
The white fleshy bits are the shoots which is confusing since they usually emerge much later.

