How things change

When I was a child, the smell of cheese made me feel sick. I could not understand how people could eat cheddar and enjoy it, let alone blue cheese! I vaguely recall that I had a gouda and peanut butter sandwich, which, I think is to blame for the aversion. What I don't recall is at what point things changed. I luuurve cheese. I eat it on everything, every day. It's the sole reason I have put on so many pounds. And just when I thought I had reached the peak of my cheese-eating, we are offered the delight, the joy, the rapture of Cambozola.

Right now I am eating a large bowl of oatmeal. It's deliscious. It has nuts and craisins and honey. Back in the day, I went to a playschool during school vacation while my parents were working. The first order of the day at the school was to get a good healthy bowl of oatmeal for breakfast. The problem was this: the oatmeal had been sitting on the stove-top since about 5am. It was congealed, it tasted slightly of the burned bottom of the pot and there were no nuts, craisins or honey. Needless to say, it took a long time to eat that bowl every morning, and it took a long time before I realised that it was not oatmeal's fault that it was so unpalatable.

Also when I was a child I had an aversion to Avocado's. Why would I deprive myself of this delectable delight? Well, actually, it was my Father who deprived me. He should have had sons, a whole bevvy of them. Instead he had daughters, so while he did scale down his teasing, tomfoolery and pranks, he still scarred me for a long time. I was 11, that awkward phase of becoming aware of your body and realising it has betrayed you before you have even hit puberty. Puppy fat abounds, hormones rage. My mother was in the bath, my father making a sandwich. he got that gleam in his eye as he took the pip out of the avocado, the gleam that says; "Run, Forest, Run!" I, not being named Forest, did not run.

My Father tenderly placed the pip in my shorts, while I kicked and screamed. Then dragged me into the bathroom where he announced to my semi-submerged Mother that I had Pood my pants. It is quite remarkable how similar an avo pip is to poop in your pants. Needless to say she was shocked and appalled. Not because her husband had played a cruel joke, but because her 11 year old daughter had lost bowel control in such a spectacular fashion.

It was another 10 years before I ate my first avo. I had been living out from under his roof for four years at that point, and felt safe enough to be within spitting distance of an avo pip. I have now been living on my own for 11 years, and am even speaking to him again. I also ADORE avocado.