Rules Shmules

I'm pretty sure that the whole thing about not sticking knives in the toaster is a huge myth. I've been doing it since I was six and I've never once felt the wrath of the electric current or the transmission of extreme heat through my knife. I mean, I get it, electricity can be scary. My cousin stuck a screwdriver into a socket when he was six, and I never heard the end of it. Good thing he was okay... Anyway, every time my bread gets stuck on the grills of the toaster and I reach for the knife I wonder, "Will this be the end of me, at the hands of my seemingly unassuming, but actually evil toaster?"

Nope! I'm still here. Sorry for all who wished that I'd finally be done away with. I must have like a million lives because I seem to survive. Every. Single. Time. Today's survival toast made me think of all the other things my parents cautioned me about as a kid.

DO NOT lick the lid of the ketchup bottle upon opening, or the pasta sauce jar, or any jar for that matter. Reason: mold will grow, and mold can kill you.

I instantly found mold and anything related to it terrifying. But sometimes kids make mistakes, and forget about the rules and try to be carefree. I distinctly remember sitting on the kitchen counter, next to the sink when I was three and picking up the small white lid of the glass ketchup bottle. It had the most appetizing ring of red caked onto it and I couldn't help but licking it off. Mmm, ketchup! (Nowadays it's on my Foods-I-Hate list...) Even though my mom was doing the dishes right next to me she didn't seem to notice and I didn't dare tell her what I'd done. She picked up the "clean" lid and screwed it back onto the ketchup bottle. I watched her place the bottle back into the fridge door with a horrible feeling in my stomach, and every time that bottle was opened thereafter I refused the ketchup.

I had an au pair from Colorado, named Sarah. She lived with us for 6 months or so and for lunch one day, she heated up leftover Chili Con Carne which my parents had made. I guess she thought it needed a bit of American swag and brought out that very ketchup bottle, all wonderfully tainted with my three-year-old spit. To my horror, there was a fuzzy pillow of mold on the lid, but the actual ketchup was fine. She poured a load of it onto her plate and I practically screamed at her in whatever English and German I could muster up, "You're going to die! Mold is poisonous. It will kill you!" She looked at me like I was crazy, and I looked back at her the same way.

Nowadays the little fluffy tufts don't bother me so much, despite the fact that I'm actually allergic to mold. There are so many arbitrary things that our parents tell us to avoid, but how many of them are actually dangerous? Bruised apples are not worthless and expiration dates are usually totally wrong. I ignore them altogether. Apple cores won't kill you. Neither will carrot tops, the crispy, white parts of lettuce, or bread crusts. Why do people throw those away anyway?—the crust is awesome!

Today I blanched my kale instead of eating it raw, because after 2 really nice hours at the gym I felt like I needed some cooked food rather than just raw greens. Well, if I'd eaten my kale raw, I would have eaten 6 worms with it. They floated up to the surface of the greenish water, all stiff and paralyzed. I'm sorry that I killed them, but I think being dropped into boiling water is a quicker way to die than being masticated and burnt by stomach acid, but maybe that's just me. I'm sorry little worms, I really, really am. :(

But that means that I've probably been eating worms all summer long. Or... all my life perhaps? And I'm not dead yet, so they can't be all that bad. Hah—this is probably how vegans don't die from lack of B12 vitamins! They probably unconsciously eat arthropods and worms all the time!

My grandparents throw a lot of these random cautions at me: Don't go out with wet hair. Wear socks at all times. Wind will make you sick (does the opposite for me.) etc, etc. It's crazy how infectious fear can be. People can so easily terrify and convince their children or grandchildren what's good and bad, right and wrong, and what might put them in mortal peril... Children are like sponges and will absorb whatever you say, so make sure not to scare them too much, because otherwise, later on, they'll end up like me; remembering the terror you inflicted upon them every single time they want to toast a piece of bread, and then they probably won't listen to you anyway, so why not just let it go?

Conclusion of these life-long experiments: It's totally okay to stick metal objects into toasters and eat worms, because what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and parents are dumb and afraid of everything.

....but then again, I probably also won't let my children stick knives into toasters or electrical sockets...