It was a lifelong battle until my mom gave up. Years later, my oldest brother told me how much he had admired me when I stubbornly refused to eat them, and my mother, in turn, refused to let me leave the table. I was prepared to sit there silently for hours if need be.
When I was perhaps 4 or 5, my mom served real mashed potatoes with raw chopped onions. I couldn’t believe it. It was the most disgusting thing I had ever eaten in my short life. The food made me actually gag. No way I was going to eat that. But I tried and tried. I cried. I hung my head and stared at the steaming pile of mash. I thought I was going to actually die, sitting there at the table, staring at those lumpy potatoes.
It turned into a struggle...a mental wrestling match between me, those animate potatoes, and my mother. I do not know how long in my life we fought , the three of us. My mother was trying to do what was right for me...I am pretty sure she thought that making me able to eat nearly anything I was served would make me grow, or something. So when she served them, I was expected to eat them. They would be added to my involuntary plate, and begin to take shape, peering back at me threateningly like Mount Suribachi.
I would eat everything around the potatoes, carefully leaving any contaminated foods exactly where they lay on the plate. Using a knife, I would surgically free the main body of the hamburger patty from the small edge that had unfortunately become ensnared in the base of the white mound. Any food so soiled was lost forever, completely inedible. Mom would watch me surreptitiously...carrying on normal conversation with everyone else, keeping one eye on my plate, on the potatoes. As long as there was some other tidbit of food on the plate, or a mouthful of some liquid that could be sipped...confrontation was avoided.
But I could only sip at a glass of milk, each sip smaller and smaller than the previous one, until finally it was me in one corner, and the potatoes in the other. I would settle in, hunch my shoulders for conflict, and lower my head. Body language transmitting at high frequency, the signal flags were raised, and the battle was joined. Slowly, everyone else would finish dinner, dessert was served, and plates were removed. The lights would go down, and soon it was just me under the white light which shone brightly down on the potatoes. The sentries were posted on the ramparts, and the long siege began.
There were many times I tried to avoid this standoff. Occasionally, I would attempt to stealthily feed them to the dog under the table. I thought this was a brilliant idea until I tried it. The problem is, dogs just do not enjoy mashed potatoes with raw chopped onion. To avoid a real conflagration, I would have to retrieve the uneaten lump of dog-proof potato on the floor before my mother saw it. I would put it back on the plate, secure in the knowledge that now I really WOULD have to die before I would put those drool covered potatoes into my mouth.
Another time, I attempted to conceal the potatoes in my mouth and transport them into the bathroom during a sanctioned toilet break. There, I could drop them in the toilet, flush, and be free of...a mouthful. What then? Next time, I would fill my mouth until I must have looked like a chipmunk with mumps before I went to the bathroom. The basic, insurmountable flaw of this approach was that the mere act of putting the onion laden mash into my mouth was very nearly just as disgusting as chewing and swallowing. The gag reflex under that much pressure made for a memorable potato pyrotechnical show. That was a dead end.
As I got more experienced, I attempted mind over matter. It was me and the potatoes. As we stared each other down, I would get angry. I began to work myself up. I could do this. I could do anything. This was easy. I found that if I did not chew them and experience a nausea inducing crunch of raw onion between my molars, I could actually attempt to swallow them without chewing. This seemed like a good thing to try until I actually tried it. My mother would stare at me in amazed horror and disgust as I gagged.
At some point in my life, my mom gave up. I truly cannot say if the war lasted one month or six years. I have no idea. In any case, I think it was a very good truce for both of us. It freed her in some way, and I was able to sit at the table and enjoy meals. And I love her dearly for it.
I can relate. My tough Irish mother's Italian best friend brought over some minestrone, which probably was delicious, and is one of my favorite dishes today—but that first time ever seeing red kidney beans and other vegetables floating in thin tomato broth amongst, in my 8-year-old opinion, not enough pasta—it was just too yucky even to try. So I was seated there in front of it until it was stone cold, until eleven pm on a school night. Luckily for me, it wasn't my mother's recipe, so it was just that once. I salute you for your much longer battle of wills than mine.