“My salad days, When I was green in judgement, cold in blood.”
William Shakespeare

When I was a little girl, I loved salad. As long as salad was just lettuce, carrots and ranch dressing. Sure, I grew up in a fruit loving family, but vegetables? Blech. I could definately do without. I liked a very select few veggies. I loved carrots with ranch. I loved carrots with onion dip. I loved corn on the cob with butter. I hated every other kind of vegetable. Ok, I liked potatoes too, but come on, who doesn’t?

Don’t ask me why. I have no idea. I’d take a salad over green beans any day. It was all about the dressing though, as I slathered my leafy greens with so much ranch dressing it was more a soupy mess than anything anyone would consider to be good for you. The lettuce itself was merely an afterthought.

My complete and total boycott of the great green salad happened one fateful summer when I was… well, probably 9 years old or so. I remember this “vacation” not becneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comause of the food fight that would ensue, but because this was the first time I’d packed my own duffle, and I’d managed to forget to pack anything resembling underwear. Nothing. Only the pair I had on me at the time.

I don’t know why I was too embarrassed to tell my aunt. I guess it might be because I knew she didn’t like me. This was the aunt that made me sit at the dinner table for 12 hours (yes, twelve hours. Half of a day.) because I refused to eat the green beans on my plate that made me gag. In the end, I only was allowed to get up because I started crying so hard that I threw up my entire dinner all over the floor. I was like, 7 at the time.  Would you want to tell THAT lady anything? Especially since I was one of those really shy kids who didn’t trust anyone, and saying things like “underwear” would make me blush and run and hide. heh. I dunno what was wrong with me.

So I didn’t tell her. I told my older sister.

This, was a big mistake.

I was 9 years old. Almost 10. My sister was 12. Telling her that I had packed my bags sans panties was like renting a billboard declaring my predicament, and hiring the boys that I formed my tween’age crushes on, to stare at it, turn, and point and laugh at me, every second of every day.

She laughed, and that was just the beginning. She then proceeded to tell my cousins. Annette and Jason*.  Annette was about a year younger than my sister (who is three years older than me.) and I always assumed she chose my sister as her “friend” cousin because she looked up to her, and it was ‘cool’ to have older friends, and to be liked by the older crowd. Annette just plain old made fun of me. Pointing, laughing, calling me stupid. between her and my sister I thought I’d heard the worst. Then, they told Jason.

Jason was 2 years younger than me. I don’t know why they felt the need to tell him, considering he couldn’t be any farther removed from the chain of “need to know”, and sure, I realized it was just to further embarrass me. They ran and told him, me trailing behind them screaming “NO!!! NO Don’t tell him!” and they just giggled and ran faster. He started laughing. Laughing so hard that he  was rolling on the floor. Oh good. a 7 year old boy now knows that I am retarded enough to forget to bring underwear. I wanted to go run and hide, but this wasn’t my house, and I didn’t know where to hide. I went into the bathroom and cried for a bit.

After gathering my courage to open the door, I went into one of the bedrooms, and noticed that everyone had left. I curled up in a ball and took a nap. I woke up to my sister dangling a pair of underwear over my face and laughing and singing some song she had made up about the whole situation. I found out that not only had my sister told my cousins, but she had also ran and told their friends that lived in the neighbourhood.  This became a long running joke between my sister and those particular cousins, by the way. I think Jason* has forgotten about it, or else he’s just too busy being more mature than his sister, but whenever Annette* sees me (which trust me, I’ve taken every precaution to make sure this is as seldom as possible) she is sure to ask if I’m wearing underwear. I’m sure if I hadn’t sat down and typed up this whole story, it would probably die with the few of us who are in the know, but I guess I’m a glutton for punishment (and pancakes.. oooh pancakes..mmm..)

But I digress…

I spent two full skivvy-free days before my aunt, the green bean lady finally caught word that I forgot to pack underwear. After a lecture about bag packing, knowing what’s important and necessary, hygiene and lastly, a good old fashioned scowl, finger waiving and “You should have told me yourself, I shouldn’t have heard it from someone else because it’s none of THEIR business”- she bought me a pack of hanes at the mall up the road. I spent the rest of the week “working off” the cost of those drawers, and they weren’t even pink, or flowery, or pretty. They were…boring and navy blue, and I think they had originally been sewn in the 50’s, and had been forgotten on some lonely department store shelf until my aunt found them.

Anyways.. so this is why I remember this particular summer.

One of my chores (to pay off the underwear) was to prepare the salad before dinner, and to set the table. No problem.

I washed the lettuce, I chopped the carrots.. I wasn’t well versed in salad fixin’s just yet, so I didn’t add anything else to the toss. Just lettuce and carrots, how my mom made it for my sister and I. My mom always added cheese, sprouts, sunflower seeds, and bacon bits to hers. I was grossed out by sprouts, so we never got any of those extra things.

My aunt was unhappy with the salad. It needed tomatoes. It needed celery and olives and cucumbers and onions.

I chopped the celery, no problem. I tossed in a can of olives. I didn’t know how to cut the cucumbers, so I didn’t peel them, I just  cut them into thick slices. I refused to cut the tomatoes or onions. After a scowling match, she finally relented and said she’d add them herself.

I set the table, and prepared to eat my salad. I refused to eat just about anything else that she made, because it either smelled like garlic (which I hated at the time, go figure) or it was soggy, or overly spicy. I had (and still have to a point) texture issues, and things like chili I just cant eat without gagging. Same thing with overcooked veggies like green beans *ahem*

So she sets the table. Everyone else comes out. I prepare myself a big bowl of salad (I picked around the undesireable bits) and waited for the dressings to be made available.

It was at this point that my aunt carried over three bottles of dressing.
French, Italian and what I thought was ranch. I grabbed the bottle and poured my usual “soup” layer ontop of my salad and got to gathering my greens.

One bite.. it didn’t taste right. The second bite, just foul. The third? Ok, I couldn’t do this anymore.

I stopped eating and asked if I could use the bathroom. My aunt rolled her eyes and said not until I finished my salad. I told her I wasn’t feeling good, and she said no. I needed to finish my salad.

Knowing that I wasn’t going to make it much longer anyways, I proceeded to lift the bowl to my lower lip, and shovel the salad into my mouth. I don’t know if I chewed. I don’t think it mattered. It went down, barely, and I asked again if I could use the bathroom. As soon as I got the green light, I ran, wretching the whole way, to the rest room. In a flurry of toilet paper and lid lifting.. well. I’ll save you the descriptions.. Lets just say, the salad took a wrong turn at my stomach and returned from whence it came.

My aunt wouldn’t make eye contact with me the rest of the night. She just scowled and relayed orders through her daughter to me.
When clearing the table I noticed that the dressing wasn’t just plain ranch, it was peppercorn ranch, and the date had long since expired.

I felt ill the rest of the week. There were only three days left in it, thank goodness. My sister ended up staying another week, but I went home because I was sick. A trip to the doctor on the monday after returning home, and they decided I must have had food poisoning. The salad dressing went bad, and apparently meat and dairy are the biggest culprits of foodbourne illness. After this trip, and after I told my parents all that had been happening, and after my aunt told her half of the story, they decided it would be up to me if I wanted to visit my aunt with my sister, of if I wanted to visit my grandma instead. Choosing the lesser of two evils, I chose grandma. After the whole -Horse chestnut stomach pumping “I KILLED YOUR SISTER” thing (which is a whole different blog entry in itself) - she let me stop eating if I felt ill.

I guess it was strange. I always liked salad, until this incident. It scarred me for a while. I would only eat salad if my dad made the dressing himself. Hidden valley ranch. He had to make it in one of those special dressing mixing containers and I’d pay attention to how long it had been since he made it. Any longer than a week, and I’d tell him I wouldn’t eat salad until he made a new batch of dressing.

I never did form a functional relationship with that particular relative. I’m sure she thought I hated her. I didn’t. I just thought it wasn’t fair that I had to sit at the table and stare at food that actually made me vomit, not just threaten to.
Ever since then, I’ve added small additions to my salad bar inventory

. Different types of lettuce- (butter head lettuce, bronze lettuce, frizee, mache, romaine) Black olives, chopped carrots.. yeah, I LOVE sunflower seeds, cheese, sprouts, bacon bits, chives and occasionally chopped cashews or almonds, on a salad.

I’ve renewed my love of the leafy green, and tonight, I’m celebrating spring with a giant bowl of it.

Of course, like my underwear that summer, I’m without most of my usual salad wardrobe. I’ll add a little bit of cheese to my individual portion when I serve it up for dinner, and I’ll probably sprinkle some bacos on top. I just don’t feel like going to the grocery store to buy sprouts and sunflower seeds when I can just tack that onto the list I have of things to buy tomorrow.

So what you see pictured here is the GIANT salad bowl I’ve prepared, so I when I get hungry I can just grab a bowl and put a handful of this mix into it, add dressing and eat, instead of reaching for something else which would be so much LESS healthy for me.

And just so you know, this is a 1.5 gallon tub, and its packed with lettuce, carrots and black olives.

So here it is, the constant reminder of my salad days, when I was green in judgement, and forgetful with underwear.

Just imagine a little salad dressing in there… mmmm..

Here you can see the different types of lettuce better.

Don’t worry, I’ll definately have some more fattening photos tomorrow, but for tonight, salad it is.

-A.

P.S. I am wearing underwear currently. Thanks for asking.

*names changed to protect my evil evil family.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 1:41 am and is filed under April 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.