TheBanyanTree: Fear of Pancakes

[Monique Colver]

Life was not particularly easy for me at the age of seven, despite the
mythology about childhood being so much fun that we want to constantly
relive it. For one thing, I abhorred milk, unless it had Hershey’s in it.
Could not abide the stuff, and still can’t. It’s . . . chalky, and the
flavor? Who decided that was a good flavor? Granted, it goes well with
cereal, but by itself? It’s simply inedible.

Or so I suspected. No one would listen to me when I told them this, and the
theory at the time, and perhaps still is, I don’t really keep up on
theories, is that milk is good for children. So when chunks of my hair began
disappearing I was quick to jump on the “it’s the milk” story that somehow
popped up. I can’t believe that I would have been smart enough to come up
with that one, but I certainly didn’t try to dissuade anyone from that
theory.

At the time, my brother and I were living with my mom, who was living with
her sister, who had three of her own children. With two parents who liked to
go out and party and five children often left on their own things were bound
to happen. One of the things that happened was that one of my cousins ripped
out my hair. But since no one would believe that particular story, the milk
story came in quite handy. With this excuse, I could avoid milk
successfully.

Until someone noticed that my cousin actually was tearing out my hair, and I
hadn’t even been drinking milk. It was a good plan while it lasted though.

Later we went to live with my dad, a man not so predisposed to partying,
perhaps because he was so old by then, having a good ten years on my mother.
He married again, and my stepmother made it her mission to be sure I was
properly nutritionalized. I suspect her real wish was to see me
institutionalized, and she certainly expended every effort to see that
happen, but fortunately I’m resilient.

She insisted I drink half a glass of milk every morning with breakfast. Ew,
yuck. With cereal it was no problem, and even now in my advanced state of
older age I eat cereal with milk. But straight? With eggs it wasn’t so bad –
I could take a quick drink of milk then immediately shove some eggs in after
it. But I still remember the horror of the pancakes.

Pancakes. There’s nothing wrong with pancakes, is there? But when they’re
accompanied by a glass, even half, of milk, they take on the proportions of
some giant ungodly demon, and taking a sip of milk and then a bite of
pancake does not make the milk more palatable, but instead makes the pancake
a cloying milky mess that tastes all of milk and is difficult to swallow.
Substitutions were not allowed. It had to be pancakes with the milk.

Stepmother did not care that it made me sick. Pointing out that I was
certainly not nutritionally deprived would not have helped. That was
irrelevant. I had to have milk with my pancakes, even if it killed me. Once
or twice I thought it might. That’s because I was young and had an active
imagination, and my stomach was in agreement with me that it just might be
the end of me.

Veering off the milk subject for a moment, my stepmother was a woman of odd
insistences. She insisted we eat breakfast every day, and she was quite
insistent on what constituted “breakfast.” One day, while in high school, I
woke up early and left for school before anyone else was up. (Not just one
day, I did this often.) On my way out, I made myself a peanut butter and
jelly sandwich, calculating that bread was often a breakfast item, as it
makes up toast, and jelly is often used on toast, and peanut butter is known
to be a staple for any meal and is especially good on bread.

When my stepmother found out what I’d done she had a fit. Peanut butter and
jelly was NOT an appropriate breakfast. It was not breakfast at all, as far
as she was concerned, it was LUNCH, and why was I having lunch that early in
the morning? Was there something wrong with me, other than the obvious? I
was, she stated firmly, not to ever do that again.

So I went to school in the early morning hours sans breakfast at all, but at
least I wasn’t having lunch.

Anyway. For years I had this idea in my head that pancakes are not good,
even though I’d readily admit that I liked pancakes. Not stepmother’s, of
course, those were ruined for me for life. But other pancakes. And yet, I’m
still loathe to order pancakes, and they’re not my first choice when it
comes to “what am I going to make for breakfast?”

And this is just silly. I’m punishing the poor innocent pancake for its
previous association with milk, an association the pancakes itself did not
insist on, an association that stopped long ago, when I was old enough to
free myself from my stepmother’s grasp (18, which, if you ask me, wasn’t
entirely soon enough, but it was the best I could do). I still suspect the
innocent pancake of being on HER side, as if pancakes can even take a side,
being the inanimate objects they are. (At least mine are – if yours aren’t,
you might want to get that checked out.)

So I’m on a mission to get past my fear of the pancake, to not suspect them
of wrongdoing whenever they make an appearance on a menu, to give them a
chance to prove themselves to me. It’s the least I can do.

Then I’ll tackle dill pickles. One thing at a time.
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Monique Colver