I hate bologna

I can't remember the last time I had bologna, but I do remember liking it as a kid. We used to go to the playground at School 80 in Buffalo at Highgate and Eggert in the summer. They had a free summer program with arts and crafts and games and free lunches. I remember being afraid of the teeter-totter...always worrying that the kid on the other end would jump off and I'd plummet to the ground and get hurt. I also remember that the free lunches would get dropped off in a cardboard box by a big truck. The bologna sandwiches in those lunches were chilly because the food was kept so cold. The little plastic cups of apple juice were filled with sweet apple slush that you had to eat with a spoon or slurp out of a big hole in the foil top. We only got wheat bread at home, so the processed white bread was a treat, just like the bread at grandma's house. I used to love to squeeze two or three packs of yellow mustard onto those bologna sandwiches.

Fast forward 10 years to high school, when I realize that bologna is the lowest form of luncheon meat and that eating it is akin to consuming cold hotdogs.

Fast forward to college and my quasi-vegetarian days where I banish all sausage and cured meats from my diet. (Insert crude jokes here.)

Fast forward to present day where I've done a total one eighty and decide that to dine on cured and mystery meats is a worldly and cultured pursuit: Vietnamese banh mi, Italian salami, panchetta, and prosciutto, burritos with locally made chorizo, gumbo with spicy andouille..yum yum yum!

Still. Bologna is pretty much where I draw the line. Bologna is a little too processed. Too pink. Too…creamy. (Also on the other side of that line are processed meats with the word "loaf" as part of their name (like "turkey loaf") and items that contain the word "food" in their name. Like "cheese food"---if you need to clarify that the cheese is food, then actually the cheese is not food. And it probably isn't cheese.)

But I digress and will get to the point: Friday Harrison had a stomach bug and hurled up an entire day care bologna sandwich all over my kitchen floor. Now I'm thinking that 2005 is the first year for me to not just hate bologna, but to despise bologna. To loathe bologna! To curse bologna!

It was bad. I had to put Harrison in the exersaucer and leave the room because I was retching. That's how bad it was.

Damn you bologna!