I have a thing about celery. Not a good thing. A really bad thing. I used to like it, especially with peanut butter. But within the last few years, I've developed an aversion to it. I didn't know how bad until today. During tax season, we tend to do more things together as an office, just as a break from the long days. Today we had lunch catered in from the Cottage, sandwiches and salads and cookies. They had an excellent potato salad, except that it had chunks of celery in it. I thought I was doing a pretty good job picking them out, but I mistook a piece for onion, and started chewing. Big mistake.

As I bit into it and the celery flavor exploded in my mouth, my gag reflex kicked in big time. I nearly puked on the table in front of the entire office. I think only Will forced the bile back down my throat. My eyes were watering, and my stomach was absolutely roiling. I ended up having to take the cucumbers out of the rest of my sandwich, because I'm already iffy about cucumbers anyway. Those I used to not like, and I recently have been giving them a second chance. I used to not like tomatoes, either, but I gave them a second chance and now eat them regularly.

I wonder if I had a bad experience with celery or something. When Emily was about seven, she ate spaghetti right before she got the flu, and ended up puking it all up on the stairs. It was years before she could eat spaghetti again, and to this day, I don't think she cares for it much. I think the reaction is supposedly something our body does to protect itself from bad or poisonous food. If your body rejects a certain food for some reason, it associates the rejection with the food, and you develop a food avoidance.