Why Is It That Everything That Tastes Yucky Has To Be Shared?

“Honey! Come smell this!” I called from the kitchen.

I heard a groan, a sigh, and then my husband came clomping down the hallway. “What now?” he moaned as he came into the kitchen.

“What do you mean, what now? I’m the woman who washes your undies. Don’t ever forget that. I deserve some respect—

“Hun!” Hubster gave me a warning look. “I was in the middle of something.”

I thrust a jug of milk at him. “Does this smell okay to you?”

He gave it a sniff. “Yep.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yep.”

“Double damn sure?”

“Yep.” He paused for a moment. “Can I go now?”

“Wait. I want you to smell this.” I held a pan of raw bacon under his nose.

He gave the pan a sniff. “Smells fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yep.”

“Double damn sure?”

He sighed.

I grinned. “Okay, thanks, hun.”

I giggled as he shuffled off down the hallway again. Poor guy. I do that to him all the time. My husband is my official food sniffer and taster. Not that I can’t taste or smell myself, but sometimes I want confirmation. Plus, he’s so cute when he’s exasperated. But he’s starting to get savvy to me. He’ll still sniff food for me on a regular basis, but he’s starting to draw the line at tasting things, especially when I say, “Oh, God, you gotta taste this!”

Why is it that everything that tastes yucky needs to be shared? Like, if you bite into a piece of avocado that tastes absolutely nasty, like it was going rotten but it didn’t look rotten. As you’re spitting it out, don’t you ever think, “Hey, I need so-and-so to taste this. This is absolutely awful.” But I can take that to the nth degree. Like the day I convinced my husband to put a green olive and a piece of chocolate in his mouth at the same time and chew. I’d already tasted this, by the way. It was awful. Hey, what can I say, I needed to share the experience. One really has to taste this for themselves to see what I mean about awful. (I’m in no way implying that anyone reading this blog should actually try this. Repeat: Warning: Do not try this at home.) The green olive with the red pimento thingie and some good milk chocolate. It seemed like a decent idea at the time. My two favorite things together.

“Ugh!!!” Hubby-Poo reached for a paper towel and immediately cleared his mouth of the combination. (I might mention here that my husband hates green olives, so he already disliked the idea before he even tried it. But he was game enough to give it a go.) “Why did you think that would taste good in the first place?” he wanted to know.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. The olives are salty, the chocolate is sweet…I don’t know. People eat chocolate covered spiders, how bad could a chocolate covered olive be?”

“Oh!! Gross!! Thanks for the visual image.” He covered his eyes as if that would erase the image from his brain. “I need a soda, or something. I gotta get this taste out of my mouth. Ick.”

“Gross, ain’t it?” I asked as I rummaged in the fridge for a soda.

“Why did you have to share that?”

“Sorry,” I answered, feeling truly chagrined. “Maybe it’s a holdover from the days when Kenny used to convince me to try awful things just for fun. Maybe it’s in the genes.”

Kenny is my brother, and my husband’s best friend since grade school.

“Kenny tried to convince you to eat stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Like what?”

I sighed and thought back in time. “Like…when I was four…he convinced me that chewing tobacco was the yummiest thing on planet earth.”

Hubby-Poo laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding me?”

“Hey, I was four. I didn’t know any better.” I paused, still recalling those beautiful moments shared between siblings. “Then, when I was five, he convinced me to eat a bite of dog food. You know the kind that is smooshed like a fake hamburger.”

“What? And you did it?” Hubby-Poo squawked.

“I was five,” I said, getting a little irritated with him for sounding so incredulous. “Besides, he told me that Blitz ate it, and I loved our dog Blitz, so Blitz couldn’t be wrong, right?”

“And?”

“I took a little nibble.”

“And?” Hubby-Poo prompted.

“I still, to this day, feel sorry for Blitz for having to eat that stuff.”

“That good, huh?”

“Mmm.” I grimaced. “Ick. I think I need some of that soda. Just thinking about it is making the taste come back.”

Come to think of it, maybe I should reform my ways. I don’t always have to share icky things. And…maybe I should change Mooch’s diet. I wonder if Hubby-Poo will taste her food and tell me if it’s icky.

C. D. Blizzard is the author of the novels Blackwater, Broken, and Profile.