These are a few things I don't love

I got an e-mail from a reader who asked me about my preference for olives. They couldn't be sure, but my earlier analogy- about being force-fed olives in retaliation for exposing family secrets- made them think that maybe I didn't like olives.

Whatever gave you that idea?

Quite frankly, I have a hard time with the smell, the taste, and the look of an olive. That makes it just about everything regarding an olive, really. I don't care how dirty the martini. It must be a genetic thing, because my dad feels the same exact way.

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Greasy little nuggets of disgusting. With eyes, like a Cyclops.

If you do that thing of sticking them onto your fingertips and then eating them one by one, I don't want to know you. Because that's possibly the most revolting thing I've ever seen in my life.

I feel quite the same about artichokes. This is more of a trauma-based dislike, than an innate one. On a first date, many moons ago, I ordered a whole artichoke. Having only seen artichoke hearts, it was my first encounter ever with a whole 'choke. And that's pretty much what I almost did that night.

To this day, I wonder what my date had been thinking, as I chewed and chewed and chewed on a whole artichoke leaf, like a cow chewing its cud. Whenever I see an artichoke now, I think of that leaf's slow, painful journey down through my esophagus, wondering how it got there in the first place.

There are many more things I don't like, and if I had the time, I'd share them with you. But that's another post, because I swear that the people I work with were sent to this earth just to aggravate me.