When I was a little kid my absolute favorite food was spaghetti with tomato sauce. I always ordered it at restaurants from the kids menu and always wanted my mom to make it for dinner. Of course she didn’t make it every night or even every week for that matter. But I loved it so much that I probably would have eaten it every night if I could. There was nothing that could separate me from a big old plate of spaghetti with lots of sauce, that was until one night changed my feelings towards the Italian dish forever!
It was a normal Tuesday night in December. Six year old me was very excited that my mom was making spaghetti for dinner. My mouth watered just thinking about the taste of the sweet, red tomato sauce and the texture of the long, skinny noodles. I sat down for dinner and devoured my entire plate of spaghetti as I usually did and felt completely satisfied. I couldn’t wait to have it for dinner again. But as the night went on I began to feel differently. I started feeling nauseated while playing games with my dad and siblings but figured I had just eaten too much and the feeling would pass. But later on while my mom was helping me get ready for bed in the bathroom I started shaking and told her I felt sick. She opened the toilet lid and just like that I threw up my delicious spaghetti dinner instantly. As it turned out I didn’t get sick from eating too much spaghetti, I just developed another one of my chronic pneumonia infections that I had struggled with throughout my Kindergarten year and the first sign of it was usually throwing up.
A couple weeks after I had recovered my mom made spaghetti for dinner again. But this time I didn’t feel so excited about it. Just the smell of it coming from the kitchen made me feel sick again. Then when my mom placed a big plate of spaghetti with sauce in front of me I couldn’t even look at it. My dad was like, “But Colleen it’s your favorite.” I think my whole family was surprised that I refused to eat my favorite food. My mom finally told me I didn’t have to eat it if I didn’t want to and must have given me something else for dinner.
About a year later I was in my first grade class and my teacher decided to do a unit on… you guessed it spaghetti! I can’t say I was exactly thrilled about this. I specifically remember the teacher making a graph of what everybody liked on their spaghetti and we counted it up at the end to determine the most popular topping. Many of my classmates eagerly shared their favorite ways to each spaghetti, with meatballs, cheese, tomato sauce etc. I just sat back and kept my mouth shut. Finally the teacher looked at me and asked, “Colleen, how do you like your spaghetti?” My classmates all stared at me awaiting my response. “I-I don’t like spaghetti.” I mumbled. I couldn’t tell if my teacher or fellow students were more surprised by my response. “Well I guess I can’t put on the graph then.” The teacher replied. An intervention specialist who was also in the classroom at this time was like, “Don’t worry Colleen, I’m not a big fan of it either.” I don’t know if she just said that to make me feel better but it was embarrassing to be the only kid in my class who didn’t like spaghetti. I just couldn’t bring myself to eat it without immediately feeling nauseated. Things got worse when my teacher decided to have a “Spaghetti Day” where we actually ate spaghetti in class. I didn’t want to be left out so I let the parent helper spoon a small amount of spaghetti onto my plate and top it with sauce. I took it back to my seat and slowly ate it pretending to like it, when in reality the smell of it made my stomach turn. I managed to clean my plate but didn’t feel so great the rest of the day. Long story short, after going on our usual Friday family swimming trip at the rec center that night and eating a few cookies my dad brought home from work, my stomach decided it just couldn’t take it anymore and I threw up a few hours after eating spaghetti, again.
For years after that I could not bring myself to eat spaghetti at all. I was completely fine with other pasta shapes. But the thin texture of spaghetti always made me want to gag. I didn’t think I would ever be able to eat it. However now as an adult I have completely overcome my childhood fetish with spaghetti and can now eat it with no problem at all. I will admit though that it definitely would not be my first choice of pasta. I prefer penne and rigatoni myself. But my absolute favorite pasta is cheese tortellini, which I actually ironically enough discovered shortly after getting sick from spaghetti the first time. Tortellini replaced spaghetti as my favorite food after that and at the end of my 1st grade year my teacher published my original story, “If You Give a Turtle Tortellini” in a small hard bound book and I got to read it out loud at a special “Author’s Tea” event for our parents. So I guess things happen for a reason.
