Why I don’t eat mayonnaise and other childhood traumas
If you know me at all, then you know that I don’t eat mayonnaise. I don’t eat it. I don’t smell it. I don’t touch it, and if I can help it, I don’t even look at it. So of course, one of Darin’s favorite forms of entertainment/torture is to chase me around the kitchen with a jar of mayo as I scream and fight back waves of nausea.
My distaste/hatred/fear of mayonnaise started with an innocent enough childhood memory. When I was about four, my father took me to see my first movie in a theater -- a weekend matinee of the Disney classic, Song of the South. I’m sure the movie had a plot, but at four, I only grasped a little of the narrative, which involved an Antebellum plantation with a boy, a bull, and some slaves. As the boy recuperated from a run-in with the bull, one of the slaves, Uncle Remus, entertained him with tales of Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit.
That rascal Brer Fox hated Brer Rabbit on account of he was always cutting capers and bossing everyone around. Brer Fox decided to capture, cook, and eat Brer Rabbit. So Brer Fox sculpted the figure of a cute little baby out of tar and placed her on the side of the road. Along came Brer Rabbit, who tried to strike up a conversation with the Tar Baby. Getting no response, Brer Rabbit shouted, "I'm gonna kick the stuffin' out of you!" and pounced on the Tar Baby with both feet. As his feet sank deep into the tar, Brer Rabbit punched and head-butted the little creature until he was completely covered with tar and unable to move. Trapped and at Brer Fox’s mercy…..
Well, I won’t spoil the ending. Needless to say, the image of Brer Rabbit completely consumed by the gooey, oozing Tar Baby made an impression on me.
One dark night, not long after seeing the movie, I snuck out of my bed, wandered into our kitchen, and came face to face with -- dun, dun, dunnnnnn -- the MAYONNAISE Baby! The door of the refrigerator was ajar, casting a creepy florescent wedge of light across the floor. Sitting on the floor, wearing nothing but a white cloth diaper, was a baby made entirely of mayonnaise. The damp, thick smell of eggs and oil choked me, and I began to sweat as I watched the Mayonnaise Baby eat tiny fistfuls of the slimy goo straight from a gallon jar. Was I to suffer the same fate as Brer Rabbit and be absorbed into the oily blob of mayo?!
The world went black. As a means of self-preservation, my subconscious has erased the remainder of that night from my memory forever. I’ve been told that the baby was merely covered in mayonnaise (and bore some resembled my little sister). Doesn’t matter. The damage is done. I DON’T EAT MAYONNAISE.
By the way, in most cases, cream cheese is an excellent substitute for mayo in recipes.
Such a charming image! Here's another one for you. When I was 24, I received my last 2 perms ever. The first one made me look like Buckwheat. The second was a straightener to tame the hair. After that, my hair was fried. Someone suggested a Duke's mayo wrap to try to heal the hair. So, I had a bunch of mayo in my hair with plastic wrap to keep it warm. The smell was hideous.
ReplyDeleteI hope you weren't hungry.