Fear and Loathing at the Dinner Table

I have a phobia; I have always hated and feared Ketchup.

No one takes me seriously. But to me, it IS serious. Its presence sends me hysterical.

Hysterical reaction to something = Phobia.
Phobias = Psychological state of fear to be taken seriously (even if they seem ridiculous).

Today, there was a feature on the radio about hypnosis curing people of their phobias. I listened intently as they talked about the usual phobias; dogs, open spaces, spiders and the like. The cure success rate was impressive.

I thought to myself, “I could do that”.

But then I thought, “But it would involve going near ketchup at one point.”

And then I thought, ” I won’t bother then. I’ll live with my crippling fear. I’ll soldier on. Bravely and with dignity.”

My first encounter with the vile red stuff was at my Gran’s house when my Uncle offered my brother and I some ketchup for our chips. It looked interesting, we let him put some on our plates. My brother liked it; I most certainly did not. In fact I think I refused to eat anything else after it tainted my plate, I was so revolted.

After this point, the problem was that the genie had literally been let out of the bottle. My fear begins, my brother’s love of it begins. I am now trapped in a world of horror until one of us leaves home.

It is the smell of it that upsets me most. Once I smell it, I cannot eat. It’s that bad. I can look at it but only if it’s on telly and even then, I’m borderline throw-uppy. And the glass bottles always had crusty coagulated residue round the opening and top. I am actually finding it hard to type now. Jesus, I feel ill.

Fast forward a few years and my Mum and Dad become friendly with a Danish Family. Now, as has been documented in my blogs in the last year or so, the Scandinavians are the Kings of the Condiment, the Pioneers of the Preserve, the High Priests of Slurry. This family are typical fans of vinegar based bottled slush, not least, the middle daughter of the Danish family, Mette.

She was a horrible little beast anyway, but by far her worst trait was the fact that the only thing this brat would eat was hot dog sausages and ketchup. And she only ate the sausages as a compromise to her poor mother. Personally, I would let the little cretin starve, but I suppose her mother loved her and wanted her to live. Oh well, there’s no accounting for taste.

So, for many years we would spend a lot of leisure time with the Danes; a lot of holidays, a lot of barbecues and a lot of weekends. The most irritating part of our association with them was that we would inevitably spend a lot of meal times with the Danes, or worse, at the Danes’ house where banquets of pickled herring, indescribable bowls of mixtures that looked like vomit and bizarre offal based puddings were the order of the day.

In amongst this culinary Hades, I would be sat at the same table with a girl who would cover every inch of her plate in ketchup or on several occasions drink straight from the ketchup bottle. It was hard to watch and even harder to smell.

She knew I hated the stuff and this made her worse. She would ladle whole spoonfuls of ketchup into her mouth just to upset me. I began to loathe this little sauce filled Viking and I can still see her little sauce smeared chops before me thirty years later. I would want to smash her face in, but the thought of getting ketchup touching my actual person would send me over the edge.

Fast forward ten years and I get out of the family home to University and I am able to avoid ketchup for the most part. I am in charge of my own cooking and my own company so I live a sauce free life, on the whole. I’m not saying I avoid ketchup fiends deliberately, I’m not saucist, but let’s just say if I went out with a bloke and he covered his food in ketchup, it would be a short evening with no goodnight kiss.

On meeting Meeester, I make the no ketchup rule quite clear straight off. There is no ketchup allowed in our house. In fact it’s a no pasaran situation as far as all bottled condiments go. The rule extends to Salad Cream, Picalilli and Branston Pickle. He obeys without question and I realise at that moment that I must marry this man.

Not all people understand. Some even mock my affliction. I distance myself from these people. I do, however, have one ketchup-loving/addicted friend whom I love too much to ban from my house at meal times. If she wants ketchup with her meal at our house, she must bring her own sauce with her, and the bottle must return home with her when she leaves. This will be double checked at the end of the evening. She is fine with this and I live a blissful five years with virtually no ketchup soiling my mealtimes.

But now, everything has changed……my kids love ketchup. The red bastard has snuck in through the back door. I now have a bottle of Heinz Organic Ketchup in my cupboard. It empties and it is replaced. It winks at me as it is placed on the dinner table. Oh, I didn’t buy it. Meeester did. In fact, it was Meeester who introduced the kids to it. And now, they won’t eat without it and Meeester joins in for good measure.

I am scowled at and mocked if I complain. I am made to feel like a petty tyrant if I take my dinner elsewhere. The dinner table has become a place of horror once more.

And I suspect Meeester planned this all along…..

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Another post about Slurry here, in case you missed it.

August 29, 2007. ketchup, marriage, phobias. Leave a comment.