Let us now discuss-BRUSSEL SPROUTS

[underpants]

One of the few universal moments of American (or Western) life is the shared experience of repulsion and horror upon our first bite of a brussel sprout. Passed on from generation to generation is the sadistic parental habit of forcing this evil upon the young. It is however a uniting shared experience that sets the bar for the worst of life's experienced that is the instantaneous mark for disgust, pain, and victimization to compare with all that follows.


No discussion of the evil that are brussel sprouts would be complete without mentioning their 800 pound gorilla cousin-cabbage. Served cold, such as cole slaw, the cabbage is a useful and productive member of the food civilization but joining the list of toxic relationships to be avoided at all costs (oil/water, Republicans/YOUR money, Pennsylvanians/the interstate highway system) is cabbage and heat. When combined these two normally benign elements create a stench that causes mortals eye popping fear. My own mother eventually had to put her foot down and demand that my stepfather's slow assault on our senses with a crock pot and a head of cabbage be banned to the back porch though I am still not sure what was worse-fleeing from this acrid smell IN the house or the horror that awaited us on those hot humid coastal summer nights in our septic take dominated backyard. My mother, brave women that she is, at once provided a safe haven for her family but at the same time created an unholy battlefield of two devastating biological weapons. Looking back this must have been another universal shared experience as all the kids in our neighborhood played in the street not in the backyards and why you always see basketball hoops in the FRONT yard in the mid-Atlantic region.

But again I think it all goes back to the brussel sprout.