I was just explaining to Kristin that I was trying to decide on a topic for Day 19 of 30 Days of Blogging, so after I decided that there's no way to answer "Why do you always sound annoyed when you answer the phone?" without sounding like a horrible person I consulted the short list of remaining topics, and this one jumped out at me:
What movies have messed you up for life?
This is a great question, because I've seen hundreds (if not thousands) of movies, and some of them have left a lasting dent in my psyche. In no particular order, here are the ones that spring to mind other than "Erin Brockovich", which ruined my love life forever:
Serial Mom: I love this movie, but I cannot look at a woman in white shoes after Labor Day without thinking, just for a moment, of murder.
Stand By Me: This is a great movie, rendered slightly tragic by the excellent acting work of River Phoenix. However, I cannot watch the leeches scene (every male I know who has seen this movie knows the exact scene that I mean) without squinting my eyes and turning my head away as my body curls into an involuntarily protective fetal position. The dead kid on the tracks? I'm fine. The leeches? NO. NO NO NO NO NO.
Trainspotting: I've only seen this movie one time, because of the baby crawling across the ceiling. I can never watch that again.
The Iron Giant: The only movie in the world guaranteed to make me cry every time I watch it. Even though I know what's coming and I know what happens, when the Iron Giant closes his eyes and whispers, "Suuuuuuuuuperman..." it's like somebody reaches into my brain and turns on a lawn sprinkler inside my eyes. It's not a couple tears, or just some welling up. It's epic. I refuse to watch it with other people, because of the crying.
Heathers: I learned how to play croquet because I saw this movie so many times. I've never played strip croquet, as they do once in the movie, but that's probably for the best at this point.
And that's it. There are other movies I like, and movies I dislike, but these are the only ones I can think of that had a real, lasting impact.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Most Influential Book
On Day 18 of 30 Days of Blogging, I'm using up the last of Leo's three part question, but I'm pretty sure the answer is going to surprise her. Leo offered this topic:
most influential book
There are some books that have made a tremendous impact on me over the years, but the word "influential" really struck me when I was thinking about this and trying to narrow it down. My answer is a book that I've read cover to cover only once, although I've read pieces of it hundreds of times.
The book that has most influenced me is the Bible.
I live with the consequences of its influence every day, whether I want to or not.
This has been on my mind since spring break, because the week that we were there was also the week that the Supreme Court was hearing arguments for California's Proposition 8 case and for the challenge to part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. It's very strange to live in a country where your rights as a taxpaying citizen are a matter of debate, rather than actual rights. On some level this is the case for everyone, as recent votes and arguments over the right to health care, the right to keep and bear arms, and the ongoing battle that women face for the right to make health choices about what happens inside their own bodies have shown.
As a person who hears their validity as a human being debated on the nightly news, I have to tell you that sometimes it hurts. Sometimes I feel bad when I hear myself referred to as a pervert. Or a deviant. Or a threat to families or family values or the traditions that our society is built on. As I've said before, whenever the media discusses "LGBT people" or even just "the gays", I mentally insert myself into the sentence, and a lot of times that sentence ends up bothering me. I find out that people who don't know me hate me, and think horrible things about me, and that in our society this is considered a valid argument. Whether or not I should be able to enter into a legal contract to join my household to that of another consenting adult is not a given, because the other consenting adult and I both have a penis.
Why am I off on this tangent?
Because every time someone has told me that I am sick and wrong, it has been because of their religion. And in almost every case, that religion was based on the Bible. God made Adam and Eve, you know, not Adam and Steve. Thou shalt not lie with man as with woman. Sodom and Gomorrah.
Etc.
This is not to say that all religious people have hurt me, or that everyone influenced by the Bible has been negatively influenced. I'm just saying that the book that most influences me on a regular basis is that one. I feel it from October to January every year, when every store I go into reminds me that Christmas exists. I feel it every spring, when I get Good Friday off from work. I feel it at least once a week when someone reminds me that Tennessee is "the buckle of the Bible Belt".
The influence is pervasive and often unnoticed, but here where I live it is always present.
most influential book
There are some books that have made a tremendous impact on me over the years, but the word "influential" really struck me when I was thinking about this and trying to narrow it down. My answer is a book that I've read cover to cover only once, although I've read pieces of it hundreds of times.
The book that has most influenced me is the Bible.
I live with the consequences of its influence every day, whether I want to or not.
This has been on my mind since spring break, because the week that we were there was also the week that the Supreme Court was hearing arguments for California's Proposition 8 case and for the challenge to part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. It's very strange to live in a country where your rights as a taxpaying citizen are a matter of debate, rather than actual rights. On some level this is the case for everyone, as recent votes and arguments over the right to health care, the right to keep and bear arms, and the ongoing battle that women face for the right to make health choices about what happens inside their own bodies have shown.
As a person who hears their validity as a human being debated on the nightly news, I have to tell you that sometimes it hurts. Sometimes I feel bad when I hear myself referred to as a pervert. Or a deviant. Or a threat to families or family values or the traditions that our society is built on. As I've said before, whenever the media discusses "LGBT people" or even just "the gays", I mentally insert myself into the sentence, and a lot of times that sentence ends up bothering me. I find out that people who don't know me hate me, and think horrible things about me, and that in our society this is considered a valid argument. Whether or not I should be able to enter into a legal contract to join my household to that of another consenting adult is not a given, because the other consenting adult and I both have a penis.
Why am I off on this tangent?
Because every time someone has told me that I am sick and wrong, it has been because of their religion. And in almost every case, that religion was based on the Bible. God made Adam and Eve, you know, not Adam and Steve. Thou shalt not lie with man as with woman. Sodom and Gomorrah.
Etc.
This is not to say that all religious people have hurt me, or that everyone influenced by the Bible has been negatively influenced. I'm just saying that the book that most influences me on a regular basis is that one. I feel it from October to January every year, when every store I go into reminds me that Christmas exists. I feel it every spring, when I get Good Friday off from work. I feel it at least once a week when someone reminds me that Tennessee is "the buckle of the Bible Belt".
The influence is pervasive and often unnoticed, but here where I live it is always present.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
First Crush
On Day 17 of 30 Days of Blogging, I continue splicing Leo's topic into three topics. Having covered my first memory (possibly) yesterday, today we move on to:
First crush
But we again run into a problem: I have no idea who the first one was. I don't remember ever really having a crush, like a giggly swooning writing their name on the insides of my notebooks crush, but over the years I've had some low key crushes that I'm willing to share.
Literary Crush: F. Scott Fitzgerald. We would hang out in nightclubs, and listen to jazz, and smoke, and drink, and dance, and be friends with a lot of flappers, and he'd call me Joel and I'd call him F. Scott, and there would be no Zelda in sight to screw things up.
TV Crush: I have two, and have had both for years and years. There may be others who come and go, your Chace Crawfords and your Yigit Puras, but these two have endured the test of time. One is a character, and the other an actual person.
First, Dr. Crusher. Yes, I'm aware that she's female. I don't want to date her, but ever since I was a teenager I felt like Dr. Crusher and I would be best friends. She was the smartest woman on the Enterprise, and for about a year I prayed every night that I would get a brain tumor so that I could contact the Make a Wish Foundation and my wish would be a guest starring role on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and then Dr. Crusher and I would meet and become BFF's.
Yes, I'm aware that this plan was both deeply flawed and psychologically disturbed.
However, knowing that Gates McFadden tweets photos of herself playing with her Dr. Crusher figures just confirms that we are meant to be friends.
The second TV crush is Tom Welling. I watched "Smallville" way past the date when it was physically and mentally painful to do so (looking at you, Season 8) because Tom Welling was still on it every week, although that was about the time when he wanted to be a "serious actor" and stopped taking his shirt off onscreen so much.
Music Crush: For quite a while there, JC Chasez had the crown. I even had a shrine:
which I decided to (mostly) get rid of when I moved here. It was just as well, because by then I had moved on to Billie Joe Armstrong, the lead singer of "Green Day". I don't want to actually date Billie Joe. He could totally just lay on the couch with his guitar and plaintively wail about how we're out of a cheese and the remote fell on the floor and is too far away to reach, and I would make him a sandwich and be happy.
I would date the hell of out Brandon Flowers from "The Killers".
That's all I can say about that without getting the vapors.
Sorry, Billie Joe.
First crush
But we again run into a problem: I have no idea who the first one was. I don't remember ever really having a crush, like a giggly swooning writing their name on the insides of my notebooks crush, but over the years I've had some low key crushes that I'm willing to share.
Literary Crush: F. Scott Fitzgerald. We would hang out in nightclubs, and listen to jazz, and smoke, and drink, and dance, and be friends with a lot of flappers, and he'd call me Joel and I'd call him F. Scott, and there would be no Zelda in sight to screw things up.
TV Crush: I have two, and have had both for years and years. There may be others who come and go, your Chace Crawfords and your Yigit Puras, but these two have endured the test of time. One is a character, and the other an actual person.
First, Dr. Crusher. Yes, I'm aware that she's female. I don't want to date her, but ever since I was a teenager I felt like Dr. Crusher and I would be best friends. She was the smartest woman on the Enterprise, and for about a year I prayed every night that I would get a brain tumor so that I could contact the Make a Wish Foundation and my wish would be a guest starring role on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and then Dr. Crusher and I would meet and become BFF's.
Yes, I'm aware that this plan was both deeply flawed and psychologically disturbed.
However, knowing that Gates McFadden tweets photos of herself playing with her Dr. Crusher figures just confirms that we are meant to be friends.
The second TV crush is Tom Welling. I watched "Smallville" way past the date when it was physically and mentally painful to do so (looking at you, Season 8) because Tom Welling was still on it every week, although that was about the time when he wanted to be a "serious actor" and stopped taking his shirt off onscreen so much.
Music Crush: For quite a while there, JC Chasez had the crown. I even had a shrine:
which I decided to (mostly) get rid of when I moved here. It was just as well, because by then I had moved on to Billie Joe Armstrong, the lead singer of "Green Day". I don't want to actually date Billie Joe. He could totally just lay on the couch with his guitar and plaintively wail about how we're out of a cheese and the remote fell on the floor and is too far away to reach, and I would make him a sandwich and be happy.
I would date the hell of out Brandon Flowers from "The Killers".
That's all I can say about that without getting the vapors.
Sorry, Billie Joe.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
First Memory
On Day 16 of 30 Days of Blogging, I'm taking a topic suggested by my friend Leo who was, long ago, one of my best RA's ever. (I always say I don't have favorites, but she is totally one of my favorites. If I had favorites.) Leo said:
first memory, first crush, most influential book
I'm not sure if she meant that as one topic or three topics, but I'm treating it as three because I have 14 days to go and don't think I have 30 topics.
Anyway, I went with "first memory", but I'm not sure how to answer that. None of my very early memories (and quite a few of my later ones, now that I think of my college years) are completely linear, so I'm not sure which one comes first. Instead, there are bright pops of memory and experience floating without context. I'm not sure what comes first, but I have a contender:
When I was very small, my parents took my brother and I to a drive in movie in their station wagon. They parked backwards in the space, lowered the wagon's back door (it opened downward, like a pickup truck, rather than outward, like a side door), and my brother and I stretched out in sleeping bags, heads propped on our elbows, and watched "Star Wars". I don't remember what I ate, or what my parents did since they were facing away from the screen, but I remember that the movie was huge and bright and amazing.
I think this might be my earliest memory because I can't figure out where it happened. If it was at Fort Campbell, before we moved to West Point, then it is the earliest. If it was at West Point, then it's in a pool with a few others:
I remember wearing sandals to play outside. This is baffling to me now, as I hate sandals, but I remember having a small brown pair of sandals. I also remember wearing them over socks, which I think was the fashion at the time.
I remember that once we got in a car accident, rear ended, while my distant cousin/foster sister for a short time Angela was in the car with us. My mom had a cake for Angela on her lap, and when the other car hit us my mom's hand sunk into the cake. Angela and I were sharing a seat, and when the other car hit us all of the accessories to her Mego Wonder Woman doll fell under the seat in front of us, and we spent a while trying to find them. My mom put the partially ruined cake down on the floor of the car when she went to talk to the cop with my dad, and Yapper, our fox terrier, ate a lot of it since no one was looking.
(In an odd coincidence, the cop's daughter and I ended up going to college together and were RA's at the same time, but not on the same staff. I think she worked in Cheney, but am not 100% sure of that. Again, memory holes.)
I remember when our dog, Gretchen, had puppies during a Cub Scout meeting at our house. I don't remember how many puppies there were, but I do remember that they all looked the same so my mom used colored string (maybe sewing thread?) as their collars. When people came to look at them and buy them, they called them Blackie, or Bluey, or Red, or Brownie. I think there was a little one called Runty who died, but I'm not completely sure of this. I just remember that when people would come to look at the puppies Yapper, who hated people, would bark and carry on and chase the puppies under the couch.
I remember that our neighbors had a pet bird, named Dirty Bird, that got away while they were cleaning the cage.
I remember that we lived on Y Street, but have no memory of what our house number was or what Y Street looked like. It's entirely possible that we didn't actually live there, but I feel like we did.
I also remember our television, which was a huge console model like they don't make anymore. It was in a long wooden cabinet, with a record player on one side, and the front panels on either side of the screen were wooden lattices with red velvet behind them, covering the speaker system.
Out of all of these memories, I'm pretty sure that the puppies came the latest, but the rest are hard to place.
first memory, first crush, most influential book
I'm not sure if she meant that as one topic or three topics, but I'm treating it as three because I have 14 days to go and don't think I have 30 topics.
Anyway, I went with "first memory", but I'm not sure how to answer that. None of my very early memories (and quite a few of my later ones, now that I think of my college years) are completely linear, so I'm not sure which one comes first. Instead, there are bright pops of memory and experience floating without context. I'm not sure what comes first, but I have a contender:
When I was very small, my parents took my brother and I to a drive in movie in their station wagon. They parked backwards in the space, lowered the wagon's back door (it opened downward, like a pickup truck, rather than outward, like a side door), and my brother and I stretched out in sleeping bags, heads propped on our elbows, and watched "Star Wars". I don't remember what I ate, or what my parents did since they were facing away from the screen, but I remember that the movie was huge and bright and amazing.
I think this might be my earliest memory because I can't figure out where it happened. If it was at Fort Campbell, before we moved to West Point, then it is the earliest. If it was at West Point, then it's in a pool with a few others:
I remember wearing sandals to play outside. This is baffling to me now, as I hate sandals, but I remember having a small brown pair of sandals. I also remember wearing them over socks, which I think was the fashion at the time.
I remember that once we got in a car accident, rear ended, while my distant cousin/foster sister for a short time Angela was in the car with us. My mom had a cake for Angela on her lap, and when the other car hit us my mom's hand sunk into the cake. Angela and I were sharing a seat, and when the other car hit us all of the accessories to her Mego Wonder Woman doll fell under the seat in front of us, and we spent a while trying to find them. My mom put the partially ruined cake down on the floor of the car when she went to talk to the cop with my dad, and Yapper, our fox terrier, ate a lot of it since no one was looking.
(In an odd coincidence, the cop's daughter and I ended up going to college together and were RA's at the same time, but not on the same staff. I think she worked in Cheney, but am not 100% sure of that. Again, memory holes.)
I remember when our dog, Gretchen, had puppies during a Cub Scout meeting at our house. I don't remember how many puppies there were, but I do remember that they all looked the same so my mom used colored string (maybe sewing thread?) as their collars. When people came to look at them and buy them, they called them Blackie, or Bluey, or Red, or Brownie. I think there was a little one called Runty who died, but I'm not completely sure of this. I just remember that when people would come to look at the puppies Yapper, who hated people, would bark and carry on and chase the puppies under the couch.
I remember that our neighbors had a pet bird, named Dirty Bird, that got away while they were cleaning the cage.
I remember that we lived on Y Street, but have no memory of what our house number was or what Y Street looked like. It's entirely possible that we didn't actually live there, but I feel like we did.
I also remember our television, which was a huge console model like they don't make anymore. It was in a long wooden cabinet, with a record player on one side, and the front panels on either side of the screen were wooden lattices with red velvet behind them, covering the speaker system.
Out of all of these memories, I'm pretty sure that the puppies came the latest, but the rest are hard to place.
Monday, April 15, 2013
"We decided to stop at Cabella's instead..."
My parents were here this weekend. We had a nice visit where we ate out a lot, went to McKay's to look at books (Dad, who said, "I don't really have any interest in regular books since I got my Kindle," took longer there than Mom and I did), went to the Dogwood Art Festival downtown, went to original Nostalgia and the new Nostalgia on McCalla, went to some flea markets, did some outlet shopping, and had dinner at the Apple Barn, and then this morning they left.
I was explaining to Kristin over dinner that they'd already texted a change in travel plans: due to bad weather in Gettysburg, they detoured to the Cabella's superstore in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, instead. It's the larget Cabella's store in the world, and they'll probably enjoy that more than they would have enjoyed walking around Gettysburg, anyway.
It reminds me of another incident, though, also involving Cabella's. While it's possible that I may be misremembering (I'm sure my mom will clarify if I am), there was another time when I was much younger and we also detoured away from something in order to go to Cabella's.
See, I mentioned back in the entry a couple of days ago about food that I don't eat that we drove cross country to get to Alaska when we moved there. At one point during that journey, there was a question of our route: we could go out of the way one way, and see Mount Rushmore, or we could go out of the way another way and visit the Cabella's store headquarters in Sidney, Nebraska. The children in the car, in a rare show of unity, voted for Mount Rushmore. The parents in the car, lifelong outdoors people who hunt and fish and sometimes join Ducks, Unlimited, voted for something else.
I bet Mount Rushmore is really nice, though.
Cabella's, as I recall, was.
I was explaining to Kristin over dinner that they'd already texted a change in travel plans: due to bad weather in Gettysburg, they detoured to the Cabella's superstore in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, instead. It's the larget Cabella's store in the world, and they'll probably enjoy that more than they would have enjoyed walking around Gettysburg, anyway.
It reminds me of another incident, though, also involving Cabella's. While it's possible that I may be misremembering (I'm sure my mom will clarify if I am), there was another time when I was much younger and we also detoured away from something in order to go to Cabella's.
See, I mentioned back in the entry a couple of days ago about food that I don't eat that we drove cross country to get to Alaska when we moved there. At one point during that journey, there was a question of our route: we could go out of the way one way, and see Mount Rushmore, or we could go out of the way another way and visit the Cabella's store headquarters in Sidney, Nebraska. The children in the car, in a rare show of unity, voted for Mount Rushmore. The parents in the car, lifelong outdoors people who hunt and fish and sometimes join Ducks, Unlimited, voted for something else.
I bet Mount Rushmore is really nice, though.
Cabella's, as I recall, was.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
What Does Wonder Woman Smell Like?
On Day 14 of 30 Days of Blogging, I'm not using a topic that anyone suggested. Instead, I'm going to spend a moment sharing the most insanely hilarious licensed superhero product I've ever seen, which I bought today for a dollar at the flea market with my parents:
Wonder Woman incense.
As you can see, it's INVIGORATING SPICE INCENSE, although the font that the "spice" is written in seems like the ones that are usually used more for evil than for good.
Seriously, though, what the hell is this?
When I think of DC superheroes that I would associate with incense, the following characters come to mind:
1) Brother Power, the rag doll owned by hippies that was brought to life by a lightning strike.
2) Raven, a member of the Teen Titans shown meditating with incense on multiple occasions.
3) Madame Xanadu, the fortune-telling sorceress who was often shown burning candles and incense around her crystal ball table.
4) The original version of Lilith Clay, a groovy telepathic redhead in miniskirts and go-go boots who hung with the Teen Titans for a while during their late 1960's-early 1970's incarnation. I don't remember her actually burning incense, but I've always been pretty sure that she smoked a little pot on occasion.
(I wasn't kidding on Day 2 of 30 Days of Blogging when I said my favorite superheroes were the unknowns and the D-listers.)
You know who doesn't spring to mind?
Wonder Woman. Maybe the depowered Diana Prince who ran a dress shop in the Village and beat up drag kings version, but even that seems a stretch.
It seems so unlike Wonder Woman, in fact, that I was sure that this was a bootleg, trademark-violating knockoff when I saw it today. Shockingly enough, though, it's not only an authorized and fully licensed product, but it is also considered hard to find, and sells for about five bucks.
I have no idea what it smells like, though, as I do not have an incense burner.
Should I get curious enough to try it using a soda can, as I have seen countless students do, I'll be sure to report back.
Wonder Woman incense.
As you can see, it's INVIGORATING SPICE INCENSE, although the font that the "spice" is written in seems like the ones that are usually used more for evil than for good.
Seriously, though, what the hell is this?
When I think of DC superheroes that I would associate with incense, the following characters come to mind:
1) Brother Power, the rag doll owned by hippies that was brought to life by a lightning strike.
2) Raven, a member of the Teen Titans shown meditating with incense on multiple occasions.
3) Madame Xanadu, the fortune-telling sorceress who was often shown burning candles and incense around her crystal ball table.
4) The original version of Lilith Clay, a groovy telepathic redhead in miniskirts and go-go boots who hung with the Teen Titans for a while during their late 1960's-early 1970's incarnation. I don't remember her actually burning incense, but I've always been pretty sure that she smoked a little pot on occasion.
(I wasn't kidding on Day 2 of 30 Days of Blogging when I said my favorite superheroes were the unknowns and the D-listers.)
You know who doesn't spring to mind?
Wonder Woman. Maybe the depowered Diana Prince who ran a dress shop in the Village and beat up drag kings version, but even that seems a stretch.
It seems so unlike Wonder Woman, in fact, that I was sure that this was a bootleg, trademark-violating knockoff when I saw it today. Shockingly enough, though, it's not only an authorized and fully licensed product, but it is also considered hard to find, and sells for about five bucks.
I have no idea what it smells like, though, as I do not have an incense burner.
Should I get curious enough to try it using a soda can, as I have seen countless students do, I'll be sure to report back.
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Food I Dislike the Most and Why
On Day 13 of 30 Days of Blogging, I've decided to answer a question that Mom asked, since I spent the day with my parents:
Food I dislike most and why
At first I was thinking, "Why would my mom ask that? She knows the answer," but then I realized that ever since I went away for college my mom has heard some odd, previously unheard phrases relating to food come out of my mouth. For example:
"Yes, I'll have salad with dinner."
I ate traditional, pile of lettuce with other things on top and dressing, salad for the first time when I was about 24. Salad was always a part of the meal that I greeted with horror and refusal, as it contained a number of things that I don't like: tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, sometimes mushrooms, and lettuce, just for starters. But then this one time I was at Pizza Hut with my friend Karen for the lunch buffet, and there wasn't any pizza out for a few minutes because they were kind of bad at keeping the buffet stocked at that particular Pizza Hut, so Karen was like, "Let's just get the Caesar salad until the pizza's ready," and I was like, "Yes. Let's do that. We'll... eat... salad. Yes."
And it wasn't terrible.
I still didn't like tomatoes, cucumbers, mushrooms, or onions.
"We don't have to get a white pizza. I'll just eat one with sauce on it."
I never had tomato sauce until I went to college and had it on pizza. When you're pooling your money to order pizza, you can't really force everyone else to go without sauce because you hate it. Half the time you're lucky just to get the toppings you want. By the end of my freshman year, I was eating sun-dried tomatoes (yay for 90's cuisine!), regular pizza, and dipping breadsticks and cheese sticks in marinara.
And it wasn't terrible.
I still didn't like cucumbers, mushrooms, or onions.
"Mmmm... pickles."
The year is 1984. The family is at a diner in the nothern part of the Yukon Territory. They have been in a Dodge Ram Charger for days on end, all four of them and two dogs, one of whom hates being around most of the family and the other of whom weighs over fifty pounds. They have been homeless for weeks, because they are moving from Kentucky to Alaska and have somehow turned it into a road trip where we drive from Kentucky to New York to Colorado to Alaska. We miss our stuff, we miss having our own beds, we are tired, and the younger child, me, is refusing to eat a hamburger that cost about $10 Canadian because it came out with relish on it. Mom has scraped the relish off, but just knowing that it touched the meat has sent eight-year old me into a hunger strike tantrum where I am only eating the fries and Dad is visibly seething across the booth from me. I have also loudly informed my family, and probably the rest of the diner, that all of the food in Canada is "wrong" and that they (the Canadians) ruin everything.
I don't remember when I started eating pickles, but it was sometime in college, and even though my parents have never mentioned it again I still remember refusing to eat that burger and being a total brat about it.
I still didn't like mushrooms or onions.
"I need to get some mushrooms for Christmas dinner."
That one was fairly recent, when I made my friend Scott's coq au vin for Christmas dinner 2010. I've eaten mushrooms since then, not very often, but a few times. They haven't killed me, but they're not a favorite.
I still hate onions, though.
Oh, God, do I hate onions.
They're slimy and crunchy at the same time, and no matter what you do to them, they only get more crunchy or more slimy unless you manage to cook them down out of existence.
So, that's the answer. I hate onions, because they are disgusting.
Food I dislike most and why
At first I was thinking, "Why would my mom ask that? She knows the answer," but then I realized that ever since I went away for college my mom has heard some odd, previously unheard phrases relating to food come out of my mouth. For example:
"Yes, I'll have salad with dinner."
I ate traditional, pile of lettuce with other things on top and dressing, salad for the first time when I was about 24. Salad was always a part of the meal that I greeted with horror and refusal, as it contained a number of things that I don't like: tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, sometimes mushrooms, and lettuce, just for starters. But then this one time I was at Pizza Hut with my friend Karen for the lunch buffet, and there wasn't any pizza out for a few minutes because they were kind of bad at keeping the buffet stocked at that particular Pizza Hut, so Karen was like, "Let's just get the Caesar salad until the pizza's ready," and I was like, "Yes. Let's do that. We'll... eat... salad. Yes."
And it wasn't terrible.
I still didn't like tomatoes, cucumbers, mushrooms, or onions.
"We don't have to get a white pizza. I'll just eat one with sauce on it."
I never had tomato sauce until I went to college and had it on pizza. When you're pooling your money to order pizza, you can't really force everyone else to go without sauce because you hate it. Half the time you're lucky just to get the toppings you want. By the end of my freshman year, I was eating sun-dried tomatoes (yay for 90's cuisine!), regular pizza, and dipping breadsticks and cheese sticks in marinara.
And it wasn't terrible.
I still didn't like cucumbers, mushrooms, or onions.
"Mmmm... pickles."
The year is 1984. The family is at a diner in the nothern part of the Yukon Territory. They have been in a Dodge Ram Charger for days on end, all four of them and two dogs, one of whom hates being around most of the family and the other of whom weighs over fifty pounds. They have been homeless for weeks, because they are moving from Kentucky to Alaska and have somehow turned it into a road trip where we drive from Kentucky to New York to Colorado to Alaska. We miss our stuff, we miss having our own beds, we are tired, and the younger child, me, is refusing to eat a hamburger that cost about $10 Canadian because it came out with relish on it. Mom has scraped the relish off, but just knowing that it touched the meat has sent eight-year old me into a hunger strike tantrum where I am only eating the fries and Dad is visibly seething across the booth from me. I have also loudly informed my family, and probably the rest of the diner, that all of the food in Canada is "wrong" and that they (the Canadians) ruin everything.
I don't remember when I started eating pickles, but it was sometime in college, and even though my parents have never mentioned it again I still remember refusing to eat that burger and being a total brat about it.
I still didn't like mushrooms or onions.
"I need to get some mushrooms for Christmas dinner."
That one was fairly recent, when I made my friend Scott's coq au vin for Christmas dinner 2010. I've eaten mushrooms since then, not very often, but a few times. They haven't killed me, but they're not a favorite.
I still hate onions, though.
Oh, God, do I hate onions.
They're slimy and crunchy at the same time, and no matter what you do to them, they only get more crunchy or more slimy unless you manage to cook them down out of existence.
So, that's the answer. I hate onions, because they are disgusting.
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