Lot of talk about SPAM, isn’t there? No one likes it. Everyone bitches about it. Servers are blacklisted for it, list owners have been shut down for one accusation and it seems to have gotten out of hand.

I’m an Army Brat. Raised on one army base or another; nine schools in nine years; ten moves by age fourteen. Comes retirement and I’m stuck with a bunch of doofless townies. No, that’s not what this is about .

This is still about Spam. Notice it’s not all caps now. Spam is a psuedo-food product invented in WWII. It looks like meat, smells like meat and is used in place of meat. Vegans eat it. As an Army Brat, I ate a lot of Spam. No, I mean a LOT of Spam. Because I was a military dependent? No, it was just what military people did.

I suspect that since there were times my father had to eat it he figured we should share some of the delights of military life. The Spam didn’t look too bad if you didn’t see it before it was cooked. If you did, the jello, or whatever it was, that it was packed in would gag you.

You’d be in the room you shared with your little brother plotting something when you’d yell at him, “Was that you!”.

You could cook it about way you wanted. It really just didn’t make any difference. My mom would try to sneak it in on us as hamburgers. Slap that crap on a bun, toss some lettuce on it, throw an onion slice and, you know what? It was still Spam. There’s no hiding that flavor. Put jalapeno peppers on it..it’s still Spam.

The very worse part was that you not only got used to it but you thought normal people ate it too. The first time I told a townie about it he thought I was joking. Then he thought I was disgusting. I wasn’t disgusting, the Spam was. Guilt by association.

The very, very worse part is telling your new wife about it. She buys it; she opens it; she gags. She reevaluates her love for you. Okay, but what do I do with it? You sit down to supper with an eerie, uneasy, unexplainable feeling. Something’s not right here. It’s right there in front of you. Spam! My God, I married a crazy woman.

Naturally, nothing can be said. So, for all these years I’ve eaten Spam, which my dog won’t touch, and not said a word. She’s eaten it with no complaint. I know she hates it as much as I do but I don’t want to hurt her feelings.

SPAM or Spam? Given a choice and I think I’d pick jumping off a cliff.