EX-GIRLFRIENDS AND BROCCOLI



Everyone hates these things if questioned. It's their defacto answer like when someone asks you your taste in music and you say "I listen to everything but country." But what's so bad about them? One's a slimy foul tasting waste of space and the other is a vegetable. I know what you're thinking. Tell me more. Give me more caddy musings on life and love filled with clever misdirection and jokey jokes. Well here goes nothing.

We hate ex's because they don't love us anymore. We hate broccoli because its green and freakish-looking. We hate ex's because they slept with our friends. We hate broccoli because our parents want us to eat it. We hate ex's because they lied to us. We hate broccoli because it smells funny. We hate ex's because they're happier than we are. We hate broccoli because we can't leave the table until we finish it.

We hate both because they are unavoidable in life. Guaranteed I will run into Patricia or Zoe or Broccoli again. They haunt me everywhere. No matter where I go, who I date, what I eat, I will inevitably cross paths with them again. Maybe at a Bistro in Paris. I'm enjoying a cafe ole when I see some mustached Frenchman nibbling on organic broccoli while he fingers my old lady with the other hand. I spill some steaming-hot coffee on my crotch as I marvel at this sight. This dude is single handedly--check that--double fistedly juggling my two biggest dislikes---AT ONCE. Surely he must be my arch-nemesis put on this earth to thwart my dreams and shit on my life. Damn you anonymous Franco fingerbanger with a healthy diet. You'll never defeat me!!

I think mostly we hate both because both are something good that we see as bad. Broccoli is great for the body and a past lover surely had selling points, but somehow we've managed to convince ourselves that these things are the biggest bains of our existence (sans French nemeses).

We give them mythical status in our heads. Broccoli becomes representative of all things foreign and unknown and the parental pressure to consume it only reinforces a spiteful adolescent resentment towards the sprouted veggie. But without broccoli, where would we be? It exists as a trite cultural extreme. People can sleep easier knowing that they have the ability to choose what food they like and don't like. Without broccoli, the entire web of interdependent produce might collapse (much to the joy of cauliflower).

What I'm saying is that the building blocks of society are these polarized extremes. Everybody hates broccoli; everybody loves pizza. Of course this is not true. There are probably a couple hundred people who not only LOVE broccoli, but also hate pizza and probably own many country albums. However, these people represent the extreme minority. The majority of Americans and most likely the majority of Earthlings loathe broccoli and that ignorant perspective comforts them in times of loneliness.

Conversely, we choose to bash our old significant others because, like broccoli, they exist as caricatures in our lives. Somehow they affected us both positively and then negatively and to resolve that in our minds, we build them up as bitches and assholes. We fill them with hot air so we can pop them and hear the explosion. When we realize it's over, we use their caricature to fill the void their real presence left. Maybe it's not healthy. Maybe it's not right, but it's how we do it.

I guess they're not so dissimilar: Broccoli and Ex-girlfriends.

Maybe I should forgive broccoli.