Lettuce Hate

So, I know it's not nice and polite and all that good stuff to hate anything, but I HATE lettuce. I despise it with every fiber of my being.

Side note: I used to think when people said fiber of my being that they were actually saying fiber of my BEAN and I couldn't figure out why they were talking about their beans like that. I mean what did beans ever do to anyone besides make them a bit...musical?

I'm sure you've noticed my references to my hatred for lettuce here and there and how I think it's a completely ridiculous food product that's only really useful as a green landscape for displaying other types of food like ribs or pork butt, and I'm sure you've wondered why this is, so because I'm me and I love to talk...oh, you didn't know that about me? I suck all of the oxygen out of a room according to my daddy...I'm going to tell you just how much I truly HATE lettuce.

The year was...a long time ago. I was 10ish so 1992ish maybe? I don't recall the specifics so just work with me.

It was summer time.

I was on harvest with my grandparents somewhere in Kansas or Colorado or Nebraska or Montana, but that's a whole other story for another day.

One day for lunch my grandma decided I needed to try to be more healthy with my food consumption. What did this mean exactly? Well, along with the fried chicken and fried potatoes and buttered slabs of bread she thought I should be eating a lettuce salad. I have to specify that it was lettuce salad because she also made things like orange glow salad (I think that's what she called it) which was nothing more than shredded carrots in orange jell-o. In a word: sick.

The thing is, even at that early age I did not eat lettuce. I would eat plenty of other vegetables (if you can even call lettuce a vegetable...), but no leaves for me please.

So there I am sitting at the table with this bowl of lettuce in front of me. Literally, it was nothing but lettuce. Grandma says, "now, when you eat that you can get up." I could not believe this was happening to me! She had never done this before. She had never forced me to eat anything I didn't want. My own mother didn't force me to eat food or sit at the table until I was finished. It was just not something that ever happened to me. My poor little 10ish year old heart was torn asunder. I sat there staring at that bowl of pure evil for what felt like hours. My lip trembled, tears swam in my eyes, I was a sad little soul. And then I spied the ranch dressing. I proceeded to pour the whole bottle into my bowl until the lettuce leafs were actually floating in a sea of ranch.

Finally, I picked up my fork, I stabbed a piece of ranch drenched lettuce and shakily brought it up to my mouth. I stuck out my tongue to give it a little taste. Yes, like a snake would do. I was a weird child. The taste was SICK. I hated it. I wanted to die. Even with the ranch I could still taste the lettuce. I threw the fork back into my bowl and sat there for 50ish more years until thank goodness! my grandma finally let me get up and throw that nasty stuff in the trash.

She never tried to make me eat lettuce again. To this day I'm not sure what that whole thing was about, but I do know this...it scarred me for life. Also, to this day, if there is even so much as a sliver of lettuce hiding on or in any of my food, I will taste it and throw an inner tantrum (that's a tantrum no one can see, in case you were wondering). I will spend more time picking lettuce out of my food than it would have taken me to just eat it, that's how much I HATE it.

Here she is, the woman who magnified my hatred for the green leafy stuff, but I love her anyway. :-)




P.S. Contrary to popular belief, ranch dressing does NOT always make things taste better.