Ok, there's a gross story coming up, so don't read it if you are about to eat. You've been warned.
When I was a kid, we had the same meal every Sunday night. Consistent and wonderful. Pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy. The mashed potatoes were made from real potatoes, peeled by us kids. In fact, it was a bit of a contest to see who could get out of the job of peeling.
I didn't really mind peeling much, until one event changed completely the way I looked at potatoes. I had been chosen to peel, and there was no getting around it. I was maybe 9 or 10 years old, can't remember the exact year. The bag of potatoes was sitting inside the back door, where it had been since we got it. It was maybe half empty. When I reached into the bag, I felt something wrong. I thought a potatoes must have split or something, or gotten smashed.
I pulled the "smashed" potato out of the bag, and looked at it. It took a few seconds to register what I was looking at, and then I started screaming. I wanted to throw the thing away from me, but I didn't want any of the maggots in the house. Yup, maggots. Two of the potatoes in that bag were completely infested with the things.
I can't remember what happened next. Memories sometimes are mercifully erased by time. I do know, for sure, that I didn't have to peel potatoes for quite some time after that, and when I did peel them I made somebody else get them out of the bag for me.
Which brings me to today. Hubby-Eric wants potatoes for dinner. It's St Patrick's Day, and that seems an appropriate enough dinner. But our potatoes are in a bag, and for the first time since we got them, that memory is haunting me. I can't bring myself to put my hand in the bag. So I'm going to dump all the potatoes into the sink and then leave the ones we don't eat in a bowl. If I find any unwanted critters, though, you may just hear my screams from where ever you happen to be...
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