The Tragedy of the Soup Part I: Vegetables

I hate vegetables.

I hate them so much. If I had to be a vegetarian I would die of starvation because there would be nothing I would eat. I would be so skinny, it would only be attractive for the few weeks it takes before my body to run through my stores of fat and start ingesting my own internal tissues for sustenance. Then I wouldn't be attractive, I would just be sad and kinda gross to look at, starving to death and all. Anyways, I hate them.

As a child, I refused to eat them. My poor mother gave up a long time ago. I remember she only ever punished me once for not eating them by making me sit at the dinner table alone until I ate them, and I just sat at there staring in sullen, silent, noble martyrdom at whatever travesty she had demanded I eat, until she got so frustrated that she just let me leave instead of trying to bargain with me into being healthy. I only remember this happening once. Now, at the age of twenty, my body just doesn't know how to process them. If I eat a veggie that is inadequately camouflaged, my body seems to go into the process of breakdown.

It goes like this:

1. What is this? This texture is unfamiliar to us.

2. Do we like this? Should we try it? Is it bad, or is it so bad it's good?
3. No. We do not like this. This is not good.
4. Stop. Now.
5. Stop chewing, dammit!
6. If you don't spit this out right now....
7. STOP IT!
8. No. You aren't swallowing it. You are not.
9. She is. She's doing it.
10. REJECT! Abort action, trigger gag reflex.
    
    
    Below is a graphic representation of how this process feels made with Microsoft Paint. In explanation, it feels so bad that my hair curls and I start bleeding from my ears, eyes, and mouth, while also crying.

And then I end up doing this awful, choking-gag thing and any further attempt to ingest vegetables is immediately met with the discovery that I am actually physically incapable of swallowing them. 

Given my hatred of vegetables and resulting inability to eat them, it figures that I don't eat them when given a choice. Unfortunately, I don't always have a choice. Polite niceties and all that. Maybe I'm at a dinner (I leave my room?) and someone gives me some salad. It would be rude to not touch it. Or maybe someone made dinner for me, and put vegetables in it, not fully understanding the depth of my disdain. Maybe my mom just didn't feel like catering to my perverse anti-vegetable wants. Whatever. That's okay. I have developed a coping mechanism for when I absolutely have to eat vegetables.

It goes like this:

1. Check to see if anyone if watching.
2. If they are play, and move around vegetables until it looks like not as much if left.
3. Slowly cut up veggies into pieces small enough to swallow without chewing, and that are too small to maintain disgusting vegetable texture.
4. Involve self in dinner conversation so I have an excuse to eat slowly.
5. Eat a small bite every three to four minutes, chewing as little as possible, and pray that different food or a socially acceptable excuse not to eat arrives soon.*
6. Continue until body realizes your deceptions and begins the above process of breakdown.

This method works about 80% of the time I am in a situation where I have to employ it. When it doesn't I usually just put on an expression of noble sacrifice and try not to ruin everyone else good time with my choking.

I used to refuse to touch them, but after maturing to adulthood I have come to terms with the fact that I have to eat vegetables sometimes. I mean, they're likes 40% of what we should eat or whatever, right? They are everywhere. It would be impossible to avoid ever eating them, no matter how revolting and unnatural they are to me, even if I end up eating them only to be nice.

Now, I've trained myself over the past two years to begin to include small dosages of vegetables in foods that I eat frequently, because I had a very scary doctors visit once. Essentially, the doctor made me believe that I would die slowly and miserably from, like, vitamin deficiencies if I continued to ignore vegetables. With muscle spasms and mouth foaming and internal bleeding and stuff. So, to avoid such a graphic and undignified demise, I started putting lettuce on my burgers. I eat a celery stick or two, maybe even a baby carrot if it happened to be in front of me.

Granted there are exceptions to every rule, and even I like green beans. There are a few foods I like, including the vegetables in them. Soup, for example, or lasagna. I can usually eat whatever vegetables come in these food, if they are cook adequately.

However, there is one vegetable-type food that I cannot stomach, no matter the disguise, no matter what it is included in: Mushrooms.

*Perhaps pretend to receive an emergency phone call from a friend that a beloved relative is in the hospital with mad cow disease or swine flu?