The other day I went to a sandwich shop hoping to get my favorite sandwich of theirs: Vegetarian Salami.
"They make vegetarian salami?" you say? The answer to your question, gentle reader, is yes. Yes they do. You're probably thinking that vegetarian salami sounds disgusting, because it does, and if you were to see it you would probably think it looks disgusting, because it does, but believe me, gentle reader, it is a very delicious soy representation of an otherwise unhealthy lunch meat that only tastes slightly more delicious when in its "natural" state, but also kills you slowly. (Can you say longest run-on sentence ever?)
Imagine my dismay then, gentle reader, when upon approaching the counter I could no longer see the vegetarian salami sandwich on the menu. I asked the man behind the counter about it and he told me that he was sorry, but that it had been discontinued. Why someone would "discontinue" a lunch meat that's not really meat is beyond me*, but my precious vegetarian salami has been replaced with vegetarian ham.
I know what you're thinking, gentle reader, and that is, "Why didn't he just order the vegetarian ham instead?" Well, I'll tell you why. It's because I have a long, sordid history with ham.**
As a child I never liked ham. There was just something about it that made me recoil and shudder every time I tasted it. Every. Single. Time. Well, one night, when I was five or six, my dear sweet mother prepared ham for dinner. I whined and complained about having to eat it, as five or six year olds are wont to do, all to no avail as I was told to be quiet and eat. I did, but not for long. I took my first bite of ham, recoiled and shuddered (as I knew I would), but that wasn't all. No, at the time when the shuddering would normally have stopped, I felt a little lurch in my stomach, and knew that I had to make a mad dash toward the bathroom. I didn't make it. We're talking projectile vomiting all the way down the hallway.
I have to say, one of the biggest problems with projectile vomiting is that the vomit travels a long distance in front of the vomiter. So, as I was running down the hall, I stepped in a puddle of my own vomit, then slipped and fell. I vomited some more as I tried to get up, stepped into that, and slipped and fell again. After a couple of tries I was able to find my way into the bathroom and finish emptying my stomach. My parents, thinking that I was over-acting so as to get out of eating my dinner, lacked sympathy. They made me clean up the mess, which had little chunks of ham spread throughout.
(I want you to stop for a minute and just imagine the smell of ham mixed with bile so that you can experience the trauma of the situation.)
Once I finished cleaning up the mess, my parents made me sit back at the table and finish my meal. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done, choking down those last few chunks of ham, but I persisted. That doesn't mean I'm eager to repeat the experience with a veggie ham sandwich.***
* Not really. I'm sure I'm the only person who ever bought it.
** It's really because I wanted to try the vegetarian turkey instead.
*** Actually, I do like ham now, despite all childhood trauma associated with it. I'll probably give the veggie ham sandwich a try next time I'm there.
7 comments:
That is so funny...
I feel the same way about clam chowder, and I used to hate eggrolls, they used to make me want to vomit and now they are one of my fave foods.
I used to sneak my egg rolls off the table, into a napkin, into my room to later disperse outside to the wild kitties. It's just that sometimes I didn't have an opportunity that night, and by the next day I had forgotten all about the rotting egg roll...until my Mother would find it and I would get into trouble. And that, my friend, is why I do not make my kids eat food they hate. I just make them starve instead. j/k
I had an experience similar to your ham-vomit story. My dad brought home some donuts for breakfast one morning when I was a kid. He also prepared a plate of fruit, consisting mostly of canteloupe and honeydew melon. He said that I had to eat the fruit before I could eat a donut. I said if I ate the fruit, I'd throw up. He said he didn't care and made me try some honeydew melon. I ate it and then puked all over the fruit plate. I wasn't in the mood for donuts after that. If my dad had made me come back to the table and eat more melon (luckily I had vomited all over the melons so he couldn't), I'd have punched him in the balls.
Oh man... the mental image of a kid slipping on his own vomit twice... so terribly sad... yet it made me... just a little sick.
Your parents are hardcore, I might add... made you clean up and finish the meal.
I would have chosen a good ol' Mexican sandal to the behind over that.
You must have TERRIBLE parents and I bet they don't remember that incident AT ALL, but I had a similar experience with ham when I was a kid at school, with a teacher.
the visual of a little kid playing slip n' slide through his vomit will haunt me for the rest of the hour...
Remember when Jody Barton spewed in Mr. Albrecht's class and there were chunks of vomit everywhere for days afterwards...
You disgust me!!
AP
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