Fried Eggs with Popcorn

Do you have an aversion to something? A food, a smell, a taste? I have a slight aversion to eggs. Once, when I was about 12, I decided to bake a cake using a lot of eggs. I decided not to use the electric mixer, so I hand mixed those eggs into the batter. Needless to say, my pre-teenage job was less than par, so the eggs settled to the bottom of the cake pan. When I was baking the cake, I became less interested in my task, so I was alerted to the cake’s doneness by the smoke alarm. Have you ever smelled the putrid odor of burnt eggs? REALLY burnt eggs? It will put you off of eggs for years. And I was put off by eggs.

But not liking eggs in this world is like not liking oxygen. They’re everywhere, and some good things have eggs in them. So I do eat eggs, but there are those flashback moments where I just have to pass…

I recall this woeful experience for a reason.

B has an aversion to popcorn. Popcorn is not, well, as universal, for lack of a better word, as oxygen. Or eggs. One can get away with politely declining popcorn. It seems that as a child he was not feeling well, and came downstairs to find a pan of burnt popcorn soaking in the kitchen sink from the night before, all soggy and wet, with the acrid burnt smell lingering in the water. His already-queasy stomach was put off, and he hasn’t touched the stuff since.

I have been sick for about the last week, with a nasty sinus infection. It was miserable, let me tell you! I have been on antibiotics, and an antihistamine with codeine. Of course the codeine makes me sleepy, and I’ve spent a lot of time sleeping the past week.

My mom made me some great bean bags, well, they’re made with corn, so technically they’re “corn bags.” You heat them in the microwave and they feel great on a headache, or any kind of ache that feels soothed with heat. I have a lot of them, and I use them all the time.

Unfortunately, after many uses, and many, MANY re-heats, the corn inside has begun to burn. Not burn as in smoke and turn black, but when you put your face close to it, you do smell an odor reminiscent of burnt popcorn. (Can you see where I might be going with this?)

Of course, since it’s not that strong, and I don’t have an aversion to popcorn, this does not bother me. For me, the odor is reminiscent of pain relief! But, for someone who has had a near-lifelong loathing for the stuff, the bags really do offend.

Which is why it means so much that when his hacking, darth-vader-breathing wife drags her sick, snotty, contagious self and her stinky corn bags to bed, that B still snuggles up next to her and tells her he loves her. : )