Why I Hate Milk and Split Pea Soup

Likes and dislikes; why do we like one thing and dislike another? I love vanilla ice cream and I dislike broccoli. I can’t stand split pea soup, warm milk, tapioca or anything squishy, and coconut. I like classical music, trains, photography, science fiction, science in general, logic, the Fall and Spring, hammocks in the shade, strawberries, I love my wife and my family. I can’t live without coke. I love wine but I don’t like alcohol. I don’t like men, in an intimate way, but I do like women that way. I don’t like hot, humid days, blood, bigots and some politicians, yelping dogs, liver, hunting, artificial sweeteners and cigarettes. All of these likes and dislikes are the result of what I believe are three processes; learning, genetics, and development.

Many people argue that what we like and dislike are the result of the environment around us. Are parents, friends and peers instilling values which we carry forth? We are Republicans because our parents are. Or we are not Republicans because our parents are. While our environment may play a role in our beliefs, likes and dislikes, I can see how it only played a partial role in the items I have listed. For example my view on gays, and my sexual preference, is not based on the “teaching” of my childhood. Growing up in conservative Iowa taught you that it was deviant to have any intimate feelings for the same sex. My parents, teachers, or friends never sat down and said directly that being gay was disgusting, but there were plenty of signals to indicate that that was exactly how I was supposed to feel. Jokes and stories were told, comments were made about gays, and looks were displayed that clearly indicated the feelings of the time. By the time I began to have sexual feelings, I knew where those feelings were suppose to be directed towards, and it wasn’t toward males. One semester in college I had an early morning class and after the class I found a quite place in the student center to take a nap before my next class. Unbeknownst to me this was a gay pick-up area and I was approached. This shot feelings of complete yuck through me. Male intimacy was not one of my likes. One might conclude from this illustration that we are taught values or likes and dislikes. However, another example gives a different conclusion. Conservative Iowa in the 40s and 50s also taught you that another blacks were inferior beings. Again no one sat down and said this but again jokes were made, derogatory speech was used, and situations made it clear that white people were superior to all others. Mason City, my home town, had few minority families. I can think of only two black families, the Williams and the Martins. Both had boys, Granville Williams^1. and Dick Martin, in my high school class. Granville was the only black to try out for drama plays. I got to know him quite well in different productions the school put on during my four years in high school and we always enjoyed each other company. Dick Martin was in some of my classes and he took the same bus home from school. Again, although we were not buddies, we always got along with each other. In starting college there was an opportunity to get into Navy ROTC. ROTC offered scholarships to college which were repaid by two years of service in the Navy. An interview was required in applying for the scholarship. As part of the interview, I was asked how I would feel in working with blacks. I responded with the cliché that I would not have a problem as one my friends was black; except this was true. Neither Dick nor Granny were considered close friends, I did consider them as friends from high school. It turns out I did not get the scholarship, which was a good outcome, but that interview always stuck in my mind. Here is an example of my environment not teaching me. I had not disliked black people despite growing up in conservative Iowa. This fact would eventually serve me well later in life. It seems to me that while environment, what parents, adults, friends think, may have had some role in forming my likes and dislikes, in these instances, sexual orientation and views on minorities, they were no a major factor. Sexual orientation, for me, was hard wired in from birth. Views on minorities were based on my experiences not what others thought. It should be noted that my views on minorities extends to my views on those whose sexual orientation is different than mine. I have learned since leaving the mid-West that who a person is is not related to their sexual orientation. The way I’m hard-wired is not the way other people need to be hard-wired.

Other dislikes that seemed to be hard-wired are: coconut, broccoli, tapioca, artificial sweeteners, cigarettes, and liver. There seems to be no reason for each of these; I just don’t like them like other people who do like them. In the case of smoking, I was extremely lucky since both my parents smoked. I suppose in a way I’m also wired to like strawberries, vanilla ice cream and cinnamon waffles. I don’t know too many people who wouldn’t be wired to like them. Other special things I like may not be because I’m wired to like but more I like them because of positive experiences. Things like classical music are an outgrowth of a wonderful education in music.^2. Photography as a special likeness is also result of pleasant experience of photography in high school.^3. There is a special case for the almost dependence on coke-cola. As a young adult I spent two years in Ethiopia as part of the Peace Corps. We were told that while we were in Ethiopia we could not ingest any water; not to drink, cook in, or brush teeth with, without extensive boiling and chlorinating. As a result everybody used soda in place of water. After two years of coke, it became part of my life.

It is interesting to me that certain likes and dislikes also evolve or come out different than they were in early years. For many people candy is a perfect example. When we are young we tend to crave candy, but as we grow older the craving slips away. Alcohol seems for me one these examples. The spirits had their way with me in late college and early adulthood. I can distinctly remember a time during my training for the Peace Corps a party where beer was flowing freely. I remember everyone dancing around me as I sat on the floor thinking how wonderful this feeling was, the music, the colors, the buzz in my head. Before Lois and I got married, I would love Friday nights; TV, a barrel of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a bottle of Blue Nun (a very cheap wine). The night would just slip away and Saturday morning would start Saturday afternoon. After getting married the Kentucky Fried Chicken disappeared and the Blue Nun turned into Manischewitz Concord Grape. Although as my family grew, I became to notice that the buzz was becoming unpleasant. It came to a point to where even a couple of drinks made me feel shaky and not right all over my body. Again lucky for me since the propensity for alcohol runs family for generations.

A couple of dislikes come out of specific instances in my life. In college I was in a play called Stalig 17, a play about prisoners in a German War Camp. As part of the play there was a scene in which the prisoners were eating and commenting how bad the food was. In order to get real feelings out of his actors and to make everything look real, the director made a soup out of split peas and flour. It was the most disgusting tasting and looking thing I have ever eaten. We had to eat that stuff for 5 nights. Ever since, I can’t even think of looking at split pea soup. In grade school, my mother would make us lunch. They were not bad, but it was not one of my mother’s talents either. It usually consisted of lunch meats or peanut butter sandwiches and milk. The milk she would put in a jar and put the jar in a bag with the sandwiches. School was about half a mile away from home. We walked to school. By the time lunch came around, the sandwiches were stale and the milk was warm and smelled. To this day milk reminds me of walking to school and then having lunch. YUCK!!!

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1. See Granny Williams

2. See 76 Trombones

3. See Bill’s Camera