Mayonnaise has always skeeved me out. When I was a child I went to terrific lengths to avoid it; it wasn't enough to scrape it off something it shouldn't have been on in the first place -- anything mayonnaise had even touched was irrevocably corrupted. If my mother forgot and packed me a sandwich for school that had mayo on it, I just threw the whole thing out. Just seeing it made me lose my appetite, anyway.
One time at a sleepover, some friends and I played a gross-out game. One girl would sit on kitchen chair with a blindfold, and the other girls would put a nasty concoction together on a spoon and she would have to taste it without peeking. When my turn came, I bravely opened my mouth and went for it, expecting something like ketchup with pickles and raisins, or some equally disgusting combination of condiments and pantry food. But it was a single texture, a single flavor, that met my tongue. My eyes flew open with horror the moment I realized what it was, and I ran to the sink to gag and flush out my mouth as my friends giggled.
As an adult, I will tolerate it, occaisionally, in a tuna salad or a potato salad, but still nothing disgusts me more than seeing it slathered on bread. I refuse to put it on sandwiches or subs, preferring dry bread to a roll moistened with mayo. But people in delis have a hard time grasping this.
Almost every day I order a sandwich for lunch from the asian deli across the street. And every day I tell them what to put on it - cheese, lettuce, peppers, pickles. As soon as I'm done listing ingredients, the first words I hear out of the woman's mouth are "No mayo?"
Every goddamn day.
It's all I can do, sweaty and tired from the gym, not to snarl "Did I stutter?" Because look, I told you what I wanted on my sandwich and what I wanted on my sandwich did not include mayo. And every day you give me a funny look because oh my god, there's no mayo on that girl's sandwich. So by now you should have figured out that I'm the girl who never fucking ever has mayo on her sandwich and you should STOP ASKING.
Now I'm beginning to think this woman might just have a tic, because even when I rattle off my order, and conclude with "no mayo" to spare us the inevitable exchange, she STILL asks "No mayo?" It's almost like she's judging me at this point, and lord knows the last thing I'm in the mood for at 2pm on a workday is some bitchy asian chick giving me attitude about what I put on my sandwich.
I believe in creative passive aggressive solutions to minor problems that I've blown out of proportion. So in this instance, I'm thinking of ordering a side of mayo with my sandwich. Every day. For a while. Insisting that the mayo not be put on the bread, but every day have her tediously siphon a small amount of mayo into a small plastic container.
And then, when I suddenly and without explanation stop, I'm betting she won't go out of her way to bring up mayo with me ever again.