Potato Chips and Mayonnaise

Reflecting on a silly little horror story from my childhood

Inevitable in time for man and all creation is the realization: the husks one behind another keep shelling and peeling off–– Edward Carpenter

As I continue my healing journey (read my first post to get caught up), I’ve found myself spending a lot of time at home. This is unusual for me.

While being a graduate student and TAing for an online, asynchronous class allows me more freedom than a traditional 9 to 5, my days are usually peppered with walks, trips to museums, and general tomfoolery about the city of Minneapolis.

However, for the first few weeks I was limited to the most Austentatious of activities–– turns about the room (there’s a little Pride and Prejudice joke out there for all you eagle-eyed readers). But seriously, I’ve found myself in the pocket of healing that follows the initial pain and discomfort of the procedure. That itchy in-between that lingers.

That’s right–– the scab.

I’ve been thinking a lot about scabs–– how they form and feel to us. What it means is that the thing most people tend to associate with them is ‘picking.’

The most interesting thing to come to find wasn’t necessarily a thought, but a memory. Or, more accurately, a story that was told to me by one of the elderly neighbors at my family cabin who plied my childhood with Twizzlers and other sweet treats. The story of Potato Chips and Mayonnaise. It goes like this:

Once upon a time there was a girl who went to stay at her grandma’s house with her siblings. The grandparents only ever fed them disgusting healthy food and so the kids always went about their days hungry and in search of junk food. The kids felt they were experiencing withdrawals from good food, and each day woke up with itchy red spots. They had no real idea where these spots came from, but they appeared after every night. Their grandma just dismissed them as bug bites, and told them not to be such babies.

The girl eventually found a hidden cupboard. She was afraid to turn on the light, because she thought it would draw too much attention. Sometimes, she swore she could feel her grandma’s warm hands on her while she was dead asleep––checking to make sure she was still in bed. She groped through the pantry until she found a bag of potato chips and a jar of mayonnaise. She savored each bit of the cool, creamy condiment with the salty crunch of the chip.

Soon, her younger brother caught on, and so in order to keep the rouse going, she had to let him into the hidden pantry to eat the potato chips and mayonnaise with her. They did this for several days under the cover of darkness, hiding from the vigilant eyes of their grandma.

But soon, the youngest sister discovered them. She followed them into the pantry–– but didn’t realize it was supposed to be a secret. She flipped on the light switch and screamed. There sat her older brother and sister munching on a bag of dried scabs and a jar of pus. When they saw what they were eating, they too began to scream.

Their crunchy cocktail wasn’t junk food at all, but a perverse preservation of their own trauma. Their Grandma had been sneaking into their rooms at night to peel off little scabs. They all ran outside and the Grandma chased after them yelling, “I can’t help myself. I just love picking and collecting scabs!

I think about this still little story often. Mostly because I’m not quite sure it even works as a story. How did the kids get so many scabs? Why did grandma love collecting them? I think the scariness, in the end, has to do with the belief that the textures between the two outcomes do feel so similar. I can easily understand how the kids confused one for the other.

There’s a fine line between hurting and healing. Sutures are, literally, just very fine lines. It’s easy to itch when you think the scratch is the satisfaction.

My satisfaction? Long awaited walks in the warming spring days. I’ll be there soon!

P.S. Not sure what happened to this short-lived flavor of Doritos, but I loved them.