My Character Arc Involves Vegetables
And other small, indeterminable changes
I’m starting to realize I like most food—melon being the exception here; I just don’t like every way a food is prepared. I absolutely detested broccoli as a child. The smell alone was enough for me to search for a new lunch table, and we ate outside. One girl I went to elementary school with knew this and chose to shove her plastic bag of last night’s steamed broccoli in my face semi-regularly. It’s one of those cruel things kids do to watch another kid squirm. Obviously, I could have been treated worse, but 20 years later, I still remember the bench under my bare thighs as I moved away from her bag of broccoli.
Then, I had my college roommate’s broccoli during our sophomore year. She cooked it on the stovetop in a comically large pan. I believe it was only seasoned with oil, salt, and pepper. She let it brown and get crispy. Of course, it still smelled like broccoli, but it was different. The crunch outweighed the steamed scent, fried oil overpowering droopy lunch broccoli.
I had a similar experience with Brussels sprouts. A friend grilled them with maple syrup and brown sugar. I don’t know how my uncle baked them or what he seasoned them with, but his are still my favorite Brussels sprouts. Having them outside on an early summer day in Michigan doesn’t hurt either. I’ve since learned to cook Brussels sprouts and broccoli for myself. (Even still, I’m unconvinced Brussels sprouts live up to the forced capitalization of grammar rules.) My favorite broccoli recipe is Sohla El-Waylly’s everything-seasoned, half-steamed, half-fried broccoli from Start Here: Instructions for Becoming a Better Cook. Going from a kid who didn’t like vegetables to an adult who prefers vegetables to fruits feels like a huge character arc. You can argue with me all day long about this opinion, but a sour blueberry or a mealy peach is much worse than an out-of-season vegetable. Honey garlic carrots? Always good. Lemon parmesan asparagus? Delicious no matter the season.
But! I had a recent fruit revelation. In early elementary school, I was best friends with a girl who liked all kinds of food. We made “lemonade” but forgot a key ingredient: sugar. When I asked her parents for sauce with my spaghetti, they gave me ketchup. For breakfast after sleepovers, we had Swedish pancakes. She often had cucumbers in her lunch. They were quartered, and she would eat them with her front teeth, taking the seed cavity out of the peel like a rabbit. I decided I liked cucumbers for a while because my friend did. In reality, they don’t have much flavor, and they don’t float my boat alone. The other night, however, I followed a recipe that marinated thinly sliced Persian cucumber in lemon juice, oil, and pressed garlic. I’ve never enjoyed cucumber more!
This is all to say that even a kid who doesn’t like vegetables can change. We (the royal we) are not often stubborn just to be stubborn. All humans draw conclusions based on previous evidence: every other cucumber I’d eaten had tasted watery, and no one ever offered me a different way to eat them. Our lives are not made of stagnant likes and dislikes. We change. As Ella Langley said, “Could stay high on nostalgia, live life looking back/We can hate it or doubt it, but it doesn’t change the fact/That people change their minds.” I don’t think liking vegetables changed who I am as a person, though I said as much just a few paragraphs ago. I think learning to like vegetables, cooking things I didn’t grow up eating or enjoying, shows that I am capable of learning. I am forever changing. Some of these changes are small and indeterminable, but as I keep moving through life, I become the ship of Theseus, an entirely new version of myself.
My parents like to say there are parts of my personality that have been present since the early days. For example, I was given a thousand pacifiers at night and still cried until my parents came in my room to hand me one. I will still wait for someone to cook for me if that’s even a remote possibility, only caving at the last minute to put a few chicken nuggets in the oven. As a toddler, I refused to smile at adults who spoke baby talk to me and earned the ironic nickname Smiley. I have a zero bullshit tolerance to this day. Those parts of me are, perhaps, unchanged. In other ways, though, time, experiences, and exposure to new things have all changed me. I will no longer wear neon knee-high socks over skinny jeans with multi-tongued Chucks. It’s not going to happen. It’s not that I’m embarrassed by my 12-year-old self, but let’s just say it’s a good thing the uniform was jeans and a navy polo and not anything with more color.
These changes are a good thing. I like enjoying vegetables. I’m sure my limited fashion sense will change again in the future. Maybe we are less like the ship of Theseus, then, and more like papier mache: constantly adding new layers but never shedding the old ones. Some things should be shed, but the experiences still contribute to who you are in foundational ways. We are each an amalgamation of our past, and while it seems too bold to proclaim that nothing is predetermined, we certainly have autonomy in this realm of change. I’m not looking for big changes right now; I’ve had enough in the last few years. However, I continue searching for these small ways to make each day different, to read a new genre, get a new tattoo, try a new food, make a new friend. These are all changes that add up to growth, and isn’t that what we are all looking for?
Weekly R.E.P.O.R.T.
Reading: Wolfsong by TJ Klune
I picked this book up while at a local indie bookshop with a coworker, and the sprayed orange edges and shapeshifting wolves brought me back to middle school. It had to come home with me.
Eating: Root beer floats
They feel like summer might actually be coming.
Playing: Willi Carlisle
Per a friend’s suggestion and since I’ve been in need of new music.
Obsessing: Searching for flowers and critters such as frogs, salamanders, turtles, and various birds.
This means I get outside pretty much every week and spend an extended period of time not looking at any screens and breathing in fresh air. I also get to explore my new city!
Recommending: Talk to your neighbors.
Treating: Cooking with the backdoor open and the music on, relishing in the signs of spring.
That’s all she wrote…
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I feel the exact same way about both broccoli and Brussels sprouts! 😄