Topic 46: Favorite Antipathies

Carol:

There’s No Accounting for Taste

 I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli. (George W. Bush)

 My mother made me eat broccoli  when I was a kid, too.  She was one of those old-fashioned types who had dinner on the table at exactly six pm, and that meal was BALANCED. She cared. But, balance didn’t really include experimentation with seasonings or cooking techniques. Woks, broilers and fondue pots didn’t enter my life until the 70’s. Let’s say that the food on our dinner table was always good, always home-made, often home-grown, but it lacked imagination.  And texture.

Heat the water, throw it in.  I grew up thinking that pretty well all vegetables were mushy. Green beans, zucchini, broccoli, all boiled or baked to kill the crunch..  Lima beans?  They were just  tiny mashed potatoes wrapped in a green jacket, and they did NOT appeal.  And you couldn’t fool me with color. Succotash, yuck.

There was mushy, but there was also slimy. Okra fell into that category. So  did mushrooms, which  were really problematic because my mother was a fan of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. It’s really hard to pick the mushrooms out of cream of mushroom soup, and it’s even harder to pick them out when cream of mushroom soup is the primary ingredient for the  sauces and company casseroles that were served at our evening meals. You know that green bean casserole with onion stuff on the top, the traditional side dish for American Thanksgivings? Try picking the mushrooms out of that!

                    
I think we expect our food choices to mature and expand as we grow up, and that was mostly true for me. I overcame my dislike for vegetables the year I studied in Provence. Who knew…who knew that basil, rosemary and tarragon could be used to season foods. Or, that pretty well any vegetable could be magically transformed by olive oil, bread crumbs, garlic and a little grilling I loved it all: Salade Nicoise, tomates farcis, even ratatouille. With one exception.  Chop it, grill it, marinate it, hide it, wrap it in bacon, I still hated mushrooms.

I actually want to like mushrooms. They look good, they even sound good: champignons, chanterelles and morels in France, porcini and Portobello in Italy, shitake in Japan. And the recipes they serve in restaurants? Mushrooms stuffed with cheese, with crab meet, with spinach (which I learned to love in France),

Those simple, little woodland growths that, like a runway waif, provide the perfect canvas for any dressing you choose to bestow upon them. Whether it's inexpensive toppings such as cheddar and bacon, or luxury ingredients like crab meat or Stilton, the modest mushroom wears them equally well (source: Donna Pilato, About.com).

Like I say, I really want to love mushrooms. But, no amount of succulent crab or fancy language or cutesy cartoons is going to wrest me from my favorite antipathy. You can even train a pig to snout it out, slap a sinful price on it and call it a truffle.  But, a mushroom by any name is still just a dressed-up FUNGUS.

               

Megan:

I was discussing this topic with my mother, which is something we usually try to avoid because she has a history of stealing my ideas. But we have pretty different personalities and different things bug us … so I took a calculated risk that she wouldn’t steal my ideas this time.  So, I told her my list of things that bother me:
-    definitions which use the word being defined
-    people that don’t use turn indicators
-    people that forget to turn off their turn indicators
-    too much talk/noise early in the morning
-    people who are supposed to help, but aren’t paying attention

But Mom says that antipathy means more than something that bugs you. In fact, it means a “settled aversion or dislike.” I think it still applies, and I enjoy disliking these things -- I mean, they definitely annoy me, but I can usually see the funny side.  

Two examples of the last thing on the list: When I was living in England, I arranged to have my landline connected. The guy came to do it, but the phone still didn’t work. So, I went to a friend’s house to call BT (the phone company). I reached a call center.
    BT: How can I help you?
    Me: My phone doesn’t work.
    BT: When you say your phone doesn’t work, you mean…?
    Me: I cannot make or receive calls.
    BT: And are you calling from that phone now?
That sort of thing makes me crazy.
 
Another example: I was watching my cousin's two kids for a weekend (which is a really long time). My mother, who accepted the babysitting job for me, assured me she would be on hand the entire time to help. On the day they arrived, she told the kids I was in charge and then went into her office. I didn’t see her for 2 days. On the final day, I could tell she felt guilty, so she said she’d watch the kids while I took a break. Not 15 minutes later, the little boy found me and said his sister was playing with the glue. She was in fact, playing in the glue, which she had emptied on the dining room table and then rubbed in her hair, all over her face and up her nose. My mother was asleep on the couch. I yelled at her, and she woke up and grouchily asked the boy why he hadn’t told her his sister was in trouble. “You said Megan was in charge.”

So, now I’m 400 words into a 500 word essay and I haven’t gotten beyond the things that sort of annoy me to the one thing I really, really hate – the thing about which I can go on for hours. But even thinking about it makes me angry. I don’t really want to feel that way right now. Especially since I have to babysit the gluey kid in about an hour and I don’t like to be angry around kids. So, you get a cartoon:  
                    
Key-word targeted advertising. I mentioned diet once on my facebook page and get these sorts of images on my sidebar all the time, where the people in the before and after images are obviously not the same. Sometimes there are ads related to writing, librarianship or becoming a prison officer. For some people, it’s convenient to have advertisements related to their interests, I think it’s an invasion of privacy. I don’t think images should be used in advertising (look up the Nestle baby-formula scandal) – but it’s a little late now. Instead I just try to keep from looking at them. So that I don’t get angry. Deep breath … this will probably come up again, and I'll explain in more detail my problem with advertising on a day I don't have to care for a small child.