Peas on Earth

The more I learn about people, the more I become aware of just how many wierdos are running around there without any sort of supervision or permits. Where do people come up with these wierd phobias and quirks? I can imagine being scared of spiders (I happen to be, actually) snakes (nope) bumps in the night and the boogey man. But what about people that get freaked out because one food on their plate is interacting with a different food on the same plate? That, of course is not to be confused with my own obsessive compulsive disorder when younger of having to eat each type of food until it was gone and then move around my plate in a clockwise direction until all food had been systematically consumed. Or my need to eat corn on the cob in neat rows, making sure not to mar or otherwise damage the kernals either above or below my current chewing path until it was their proper turn.

Those are merely the folly of youth, the play of kids to annoy their parents. What I am talking about are the people that get freaked out that their peas are touching the mashed potatos. Of course let me state it here I for one don't believe a pea should ever be on a plate to begin with. In fact, I am not even sure I believe in peas, but that is not what I am here to talk about. This was brought to my attention in Brussels. When we got to la Cantina last Saturday night and settled into our chairs for a Brazilian feast, Karim turned a whiter shade of pale when he saw that the tables had been set with the knives resting between two tines of the forks. At first I thought he was joking, but no. It is not the fact that the knife and fork were touching each other, it was the way they were touching. As if there was some sort of cutlery porn we were all very unaware of. Just the sight of it sent shivers down his spine. I did go out of my way a few times to put my knife between the tines of my fork just for entertainment purposes. It was a huge success.

And then there is Marco's brother. He gets freaked out by kleenex. Kleenex. He can use a paper towel to blow the old nose, but a kleenex has him running for the hills screaming for mercy. Imagine the fun his parents used to have. My parents would threaten us with grounding, bodily harm and the big one - no television. All his parents had to do was threaten to throw a tissue at him. Of course, If I had been his brother, I would have kleenexed his bed every night just to watch him wake up screaming. Nik, being the loveable cocktail mixing, Martha Stewart reading whack-job that he is can't take someone touching his fingers under the fingernails, which is an open invitation for Marco to try and do that as much as possible.

Where do you people come up with these things?