The Finicky Eater

This is one of a handful of experimental flash prose pieces I wrote in graduate school.

The tomatoes are a miracle.

I go out in the yard and pluck the little red babies off the vine. I cut them up and put them in everything. I put them in my noodles. I put them in my sauces. I cut them up and eat them raw. Raw tomatoes! I’m eating them up. Here I am craving these homegrown wonders, already missing them as the season is ending.

I hate tomatoes.

Always have. My mama used to make me sit at the table until I ate the yucky tomatoes. Or the green peas. Or the corn. I’d sit there for hours. Or ’til my mama got sick of me and told me to get up and go to bed. My pickiness is legendary in my family. “She don’t like black eyed peas.” “She hates creamed corn.”

We kids were never that big on all that old-timer food anyway. Like greens. Mama could cook up some turnip and mustard greens, but she never did because none of us would eat them. Or chit’lins. For some holidays, Mama would stink up the house cleaning nasty hog guts for the big dinner. I remember tasting them once or twice, but I wasn’t impressed.  As an adult, I stopped eating pork anyway.

I stopped eating a lot of things. Beef. White rice. Fried chicken. Some foods I don’t eat because I don’t think they’re good for me, others because I find their taste dull. Becoming a grown-up has granted me the power to eat only the foods I find absolutely delicious.

My mama gave up on making me eat what I didn’t want to eat a long time ago. She knows the foods I detest like she knows my favorite movies and songs. Like she knows what day I was born.

The other day, I cooked and ate fried green tomatoes for the first time in my life. Fried green tomatoes are another one of those old-timer foods my mama used to eat.

Do I have to tell my mama I like tomatoes? If I did, she’d probably say, “Who the hell are you?”