By Ellen C. Caldwell
I am pretty sure that I was born with a genetic mutation, or at least it’s one in America: I don’t like sandwiches. Actually, I hate them. The last one I ate was in preschool when my mom thought she could get rid of this strange, youthful conviction by making me eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in order to see Sesame Street’s Follow that Bird.
Something about a sandwich’s texture combination and “mouth feel” (a term I happily learned later in life) always repelled me. Why do people want to bite through squishy pre-sliced bread to encounter other squishiness like peanut butter and jelly – or worse, crunchy lettuce and processed meat?
As you can imagine, elementary school lunches were hard for me—on a practical level, it was difficult for my parents to figure out what to pack. On a social level, children make fun of people who do things differently…