I Don't Believe In Anything So You May As Well Forget About Me, It's Time You Took It Upon Yourself To Go Join The Other Team, Forget About Me

--"Let's Go Bowling", Camera Obscura

It's not often I try new foods. I've pretty much been set in my ways for a couple of decades now. It isn't that I'm not willing to experiment with the tastes and foods I already know--I'm still up for that next cut of steak, that new style of St. Louis Ribs, and another take on trout. It's just that I've tried most foods by now and I don't plan on adding any more to what I eat.

Thus, it was surprising that I ate an entire plate of mushrooms which had come with my Mongolian Beef last Friday. Up until then I had refused to eat mushrooms altogether. I don't know--somewhere along the line I had tried mushrooms on pizza I believe. After that I just had it in my head that I didn't like the stuff. It didn't matter that I'd never tried it prepared any other way. It didn't matter that dried-up mushroom isn't exactly the best indicator of all the flavor that it has to offer. All that mattered was that I had given it its one opportunity and it had blown it.

Honestly, if I really thought about it I'd have to say my aversion to mushrooms had more to do with the rule than the actuality. You see when I form an opinion I believe is flimsy I often invent a humorous rule to validate it to others. I don't like eating fries with ketchup? Why, that becomes I don't eat foods that rhyme together. I don't like eating most vegetables. Why, that becomes everyone who ate vegetables one hundred fifty years ago is dead now. Therefore, if you eat vegetables you will die. And, as aforementioned, I never much cared for mushrooms. To that I invented the belief that mushrooms killed the unicorns and, as well, if you eat mushrooms you would surely perish.

With me I believe if I reiterate something enough times I began to believe it myself. I mean--I know unicorns aren't real, but a small part of my mind just from hearing it repeated so much must have believed my rule about not eating mushrooms. I don't know how else to explain never having tried it again after that one early incident for almost thirty years.

Mushrooms are delicious. Hmmm. Well, at least those mushrooms I had on Friday were. For whatever reason I saw through the lunacy of not trying something new simply because I had mandated some silly rule about it. It just occurred to me that mushrooms were something I had made my mind up early on and never gone back to update my opinion. I have a real weakness for that kind of mentality I'm afraid. I form a first opinion about a great many things and never stay around to form a second or third opinion.

It makes me wonder what else I've missed out on for the sake of sticking with my gut instincts and, of course, for putting entirely too much stock in the code of rules I've crafted seemingly out of thin air. Deciding what I believe in should be a lifelong process and not one that happens in an instance.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers