No, Olive You, Man

Everybody needs at least one constant truth in their life to keep them sane.

For me, that one truth was that I could always count on olives to be intolerably nasty.

I knew from an early age that olives and I weren’t going to get along.

For example, when I was 9 I had gone out to eat at our local Pizza Hut with my Little League baseball team after a game. Though I thought I had taken adequate precautions and picked all the chunks of olive off of my piece of Supreme pizza, apparently my youthful gluttony kicked in a second too soon as I recklessly jammed it into my eagerly awaiting proverbial pie-hole.

As soon as it touched the tip of my tongue, however, alarm bells were going off in my mouth. Like putting one’s hand on a hot stove, in an effort to protect itself, my body swiftly rejected the bite back into my hand and onto my plate. Sure as shit, there was the tiniest speck of olive hidden deep in the cheese. I vaguely remember muttering some comment to myself about the “damn nasty olive.”

I probably would have never remembered that last detail, except that the next day, my dad ripped me a proverbial new one, going off on me about how rude I had been. I guess somehow word about the non-event had gotten back to him, and for reasons that will forever be beyond me, he thought the appropriate reaction was to chew my ass out over it.

I was not pleased with him at all–I was like “Hey, I’m the victim here! Would it hurt to show a little sympathy for your wounded offspring?”

That may sound a little dramatic, but you have to understand, I had been thoroughly traumatized just from having that sharp, unpleasant sensation in my mouth for a mere 300 milliseconds. And then, to add insult to injury, I was being made out to be the village asshole over the whole ordeal. The olive had managed to screw me over twice in one shot.

So yeah, as far as I was concerned, olives could go pit themselves where the sun don’t shine.

For many a decade this animosity held true.

My dispassion for slimy mushrooms, once thought also to be a constant, gave way to a modest respect for their savory meatiness. Presidents came and went. The length and color(s) of my hair ebbed and flowed.

I even finally figured out how to convince a beautiful, competent, and kind female to hitch her star to my wagon.

Yet amidst this inevitable sea of change, like a solid rock I could plant my feet on, was the fact that olives were an agricultural atrocity–nay, a culinary catastrophe, I dare say.

It was shortly after I got married at the age of 27 that the first crack appeared in this rock.

I got to attend a physics conference in New Orleans, and since it coincided with the Boss Lady’s Spring Break,¹No, I wasn’t robbing the cradle–she was getting her second degree in nursing when we met and got married. I got to bring her along for what was approximately a mini second honeymoon. I mean, I did have to give a short talk at the conference, so that was hanging over my head pretty much the whole week that we were there. But hey–we were in New Orleans, there was much to see and–more importantly–much to eat.

First day I was there, I went to a mini-conference related to my particular sub-field, and in all of the complimentary box lunches were muffulettas,²If you’re not familiar with these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muffuletta. the quintessential New Orleans sandwich. The important detail here is that muffulettas must have a thick layer of olive salad, and of course my sandwich was no exception.

I was like, “hell no, mofo!” and promptly scraped all them revolting olives off. I didn’t care if I was being culturally insensitive–this one was on them because I know for a fact that olives are not even close to being universally loved.³Definite proof that I’m not alone in this: https://www.mic.com/articles/107536/if-you-absolutely-despise-olives-there-could-be-a-good-reason-why. What kind of presumptive pricks force feed everyone olives without offering any alternatives?

Anyways, later that same trip, whilst caught up in a romantic/adventurous moment with my lady friend, I…I…I, uh…I tried a muffuletta without taking the olives off.

It must have been the romance of it all, but…I kinda like it. Just a little bit though–just barely beyond “tolerable.”

Interestingly, once back home, I found myself with an occasional hankering for muffulettas. That casual hankering slowly morphed into a craving, to the point where I even looked into having one shipped in from that particular deli for the Boss Lady’s birthday.

Like a mealtime MacGyver, I found that if I was really desperate I could improvise…with olives. It turns out that *gasp* olives and muffulettas taste awfully alot like each other. Go figure.

I was still in denial for a few more years though. I would reticently admit that, solely in the context of muffulettas, I could enjoy olives as part of the larger experience, but was adamant that I was still a hardcore oleaphobe.

Fittingly, it was on another physics-related business trip when I found myself stuck with two of my much elder professors/collaborators in the Philadelphia airport with an hour to kill before our flight home. Being distinguished and refined fellows, they gravitated towards the airports wine + olive bar, and dragged me along for the ride.

I think deep down, I wasn’t that resistant to the idea, but I had to at least pretend to put up a fight out of principle. You know, “Well, you can make me eat these fancy olives, but I don’t have to like it!”

I liked it.

I casually brought up my history with those “balls from hell”⁴I just recently picked up that term from here: https://www.mic.com/articles/107536/if-you-absolutely-despise-olives-there-could-be-a-good-reason-why (same as previous reference). with my associates, and I was somewhat surprised when our collaborator, J⁵Not my brother “J”–it’s actually spelled Jie in this case, but since it’s a Chinese name, we just use “J” since it perfectly conveys the pronunciation. (who I didn’t know as well), was like, “Oh yeah, that pretty accurately describes the trajectory of my relationship with them as well…” He went on to explain in depth about how he, too, once hated the ‘live, but had gradually come to appreciate the intricate nuances that awaited those intrepid enough to explore them.

It was in that moment that I finally found the courage to come to terms with man I had become.

It was official: I genuinely appreciated and enjoyed olives.

And you know what else I genuinely appreciated and enjoyed? The small gesture that J had made to share that sliver of life wisdom with me. While it may seem asinine on the surface, his act of incidental mentorship impacted me far greater than anything we ever did together academically. He opened my eyes to the possibility of a path that leads to discovering refined experiences in something I swore I would hate to my death.

No matter how old you are, it’s never too late to develop a new appreciation for an old nemesis. If I could come to openly love olives, then what else might I find myself enjoying when I revisit other things that I may have written off in the past, or not given a second thought to at all?

Ultimately, what he was showing me was a blueprint for personal growth, with the real gift being a much fuller and richer life ahead of me.

So J, if you ever read this, thank you. To everyone else, I hope that by trying to rub my little mini-spiritual journey off on you, your future life may be just wee bit more of a life fully lived.⁶I accidentally mistyped this as “foully lived”…and I was really tempted to not correct myself, because admit it, that version is waaaay better.

And the real point of the story is, if I could go back to the moment when I was slightly intoxicated on wine, olive brine, and life itself, I would turn to J and drunkly proclaim in my most obnoxious bro-voice…

“No, olive you, man.”

Now that you know how the story ends, I figure you might be interested in an origin story. They seem to be all the rage these days, no?

Earlier I chose to share an olive-related anecdote from when I was 9, but really my hate-hate relationship with olives goes back much further.

The first Thanksgiving⁷“Aha! So this is supposed to be a Thanksgiving-themed post, then?” you may be correctly asking yourself. that I can remember clearly, I remember for all the wrong reasons.

Although I was only 3 at the time, my dislike for olives had already been well-established in my mind. Like I said, it was a life-truth, something you just seemingly have known forever.

As with almost every Kansas Thanksgiving in my life, I was at my aunt’s house with pretty much every family member on my mom’s side. Specifically, this included my many siblings and cousins.

Since I was the next to youngest cousin at the time, it goes without saying that I was hanging out with a small gang of ones older than me. Oh, and speaking of constants, a constant at all of these late November family feasts would be a relish tray that would prominently feature black olives.

So, us kids being kids, the other members of my party started putting olives on each of their fingers, and would pretend to be some weird food version of Freddy Kruger. It looked like a blast, so naturally, I joined right in.

I was having fun playing with the food along with everyone else, when gradually they started eating the olives off their fingers. Of course, there was no way in hell that I was going to eat the ones on mine, so I went to go throw them away and be on my merry way.

However, before I could dispose of them, I was intercepted by either my grandma…or maybe it was an aunt? Surprisingly, I can’t remember exactly who to blame for scarring me for life.

Whoever it was, though, they were a real Food Fascist about it, insisting that I eat every single one of them, knowing full well how much I hated them.

I cried, I begged, I pled for mercy.

No dice. They stood firm in their position, and would not let me leave until I ate them all.

This Mediterranean Standoff went on for a good 15-20 minutes, which is, like, forever, in 3-year-old time.

Now, I’m not one given to using potty words, but this seriously ----- with my head.

I mean, they were being pure evil dickheads about it. For god’s sake, I was three.

I didn’t realize that by sticking my finger in their pit-holes, I was effectively committing myself to consummating my relationship with the olives via consumption. I was just having a little fun with my cousins. Why was this adult all up in my shit, yo?

As for my clean-fingered cousins, they all bailed on me, so I was left with no one to defend me, nary a soul to champion my cause. They had lured me into the situation, and then were like, “Well, it sounds like you got a real you problem, now don’t you? See ya!”

In the end all the crying in the world didn’t get me anywhere. I vaguely remember gagging them down one by one, and even though I have a much evolved appreciation for them now, as I recollect this experience in writing this, it still makes me vomit a wee bit in my mouth. And though I describe the memory as “vague” I think that is only because I’ve seriously tried to block out this core traumatic even from my childhood.

If you can’t tell by the way I write about it, this has stuck with me my whole life, and not in a positive way. Let’s just say I’m not a big fan of arbitrary enforcement of arbitrary rules. Fairness is important to me, and this is one of the experiences that helped shape that into a more severe version than what might be considered healthy.

Case in point: one of the couple of the Thanksgivings I was in grad school but before I got married, I was spending it at my brother’s house with his family. My nephew, who was 3 or 4 at the time, tried pulling the same shit with the olives on the fingers just as I had at that age.

Now, it is a natural part of the human psyche for the abused to often become the abuser, and I there I found myself, attempting to perpetuate the vicious cycle of olive-eating enforcement. If I had to suffer that dumbass rule, then why should he get out of it, huh? Where’s the fairness in that?

It may surprise you, but when my sister came along, she did not back me up at all on that point–nor did my brother who eventually joined us. We had a good 5-minute argument about it, but in the end, those olives went to waste.

Truth be told, I was actually relieved that I was unsuccessful. I really don’t wish my early olive experience on anyone, and I would hate to have been the one to scar my nephew for NO ----- REASON.

So…this Thanksgiving, give thanks that you’re not a grown man who probably really should see a therapist concerning what, in this doctor’s humble opinion, appears to be…some sort of weird Stockholm Syndrome?

To quote a favorite band of mine:

Boy, you just don’t know how lucky you are.

Electric Six, Infected girls

Content created on: 23/24 November 2019 (Sat/Sun).

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