Adventures with: Ketchup

I suppose I cornered myself into writing this blog post since I was unintentionally vague about my being engaged on Twitter. (That sentence is intentionally vague.) No, I am not engaged. I was, however, engaged for about two and a half weeks back in the early 2000s – and I won't say which year out of respect to my former fiance*. Not that he reads my blog, but you know how these things are. For all intents and purposes of the story, his name henceforth will be Freckles. Yes, he was a ginger. Did you have any doubt?

Once upon a time, long, long ago, I was a young and beautiful college student. (Hey, it's my story!) I had fallen in love with one of my very dear friends after a very traumatic event in my life. Freckles was not someone I would have agreed to date under normal circumstances (he was neither gut-wrenchingly handsome or in his thirties), but I have never regretted falling in love with him. (Well, except after our messy breakup, but don't we all at first?) And I digress. Back to the story. Freckles and I were holed up in a nasty hotel room and we had just gotten lunch from a local Greek restaurant. Yes, we were holed up in a nasty, cheap motel because we were secret lovers. Ours was not necessarily a forbidden romance, but I was definitely keeping it under wraps. Why? I don't know. I guess I'm just a natural hoarder of things – just not on an A&E scale. My friends did not know, my family did not know, the mailman did not know. Get the picture? Jeez, I'm off track. New paragraph?

Greek food! Yes, we were eating gyros and seasoned wedges from a local drive-thru Greek place. It was mediocre (at best), and was in need of condiments. I dug around in the food bad and managed to find some ketchup packets. I figured it was a long shot because Freckles hated all things tomatoes. I laid the packages on the table, and pushed some over to my love. I am not exaggerated when I say he went absolutely apeshit.

Does ketchup make you angry? Do you ever find yourself spewing filth at the sight of it? This boy did. You would have thought that ketchup was made from the blood of newborn kittens by the way he was behaving. Needless to say, I was confused. Bewildered. Startled. Intrigued.

I did not interrupt him. It was too much fun to watch. His wrath was not aimed at me – it was one hundred percent at the ketchup. He picked up every single packet, took them outside, and stomped on them. Oh yeah, there was some anger going on. People were turning around to look at this angry ginger. I just continued to watch through the window. Who am I to stop him?

After Freckles decided that he was finished demolishing all things ketchup in his general vicinity, he returned to the table and began to eat like absolutely nothing had happened. I watched him for a minute with raised eyebrows (to gauge the safety of the impending interrogation), and I decide to dive into this one.

"So... Are we not ketchup people?"

If looks were capable of physical harm, I would have been just as flat and beaten down as those poor, massacred ketchup packets.

I eventually cajoled Freckles into explaining to me his intense hatred of ketchup. (I knew he disliked tomatoes, but I don't like liver, and you won't see me going schizo at the grocery store at the sight of it.) Apparently, it was a family thing. His grandfather owns a bunch of ketchup factories that manufacture for that brand (and others) or something along those lines. They weren't exactly on good terms (i. e. Freckles was a spoiled shit and this explained it), but he was the only heir. He was expected to do things that he did not want to business-wise, so he did nothing at all. It took a minute for me to digest that. I asked him how much he stood to inherit.

"Millions."

No, I did not marry this man. He was one of those real life embodiments of Peter Pan. He also had some anger issues (big shock, right?). And I can never look at ketchup the same way again.


*I also changed some details to protect his identity, but believe me, it was NOT the good parts.