Running with Scissors

Sara Peterson-Davis has worked as a newspaper researcher and reporter, as well as a communications director and consultant. She and her husband, Monty Davis, can be found in Liberty, Mo., keeping their two children from running with scissors. Contact Sara

It's All Gravy

For people like me (and I suspect I’m not the only one out there), the holiday season is a difficult time of year to get through.

It’s not that we’re saddened by the often-forced joy of the season, or repulsed by it’s over-commercialization. No, it’s more meat and potatoes than that. Actually it’s the gravy that everyone insists on pouring all over those meat and potatoes.

You see I am one of maybe three people in the Midwest who suffer from gravypouraphobia, or the fear of gravy.

Brown, white, red or any other color in between, I fear gravy. Actually, after 40-plus years my fear has turned to a kind of loathing. I hate the way gravy tastes, feels, smells and, frankly, looks gelatinously sitting in a bowl, tureen or on a plate.

The story goes that at some point in my toddlerhood my mom sat a bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy in front of me.

I looked at it, dropped my hand in the middle of it and a visible shutter went through my person. Since that day, I have avoided gravy at all cost.

I spent an entire year in college fending off cafeteria ladies who lived to drown nearly everything on the menu with either white or brown gravy. The only thing that seemed exempt from their ladles were bowls of Capn’ Crunch and donuts.

People have assured me over the years that I just haven’t had the “right” kind of gravy, which usually translates to I haven’t had “their” gravy. Trust me no recipe, sample or surprise gravy intervention can dissuade me from this lifetime issue I’ve had with that often times lumpy mixture of animal fat, flour and water.

Which brings me back to the whole gravy and holiday season thing.

Now that the midterm election advertising is over, the airwaves will be bombarded with scenes of happy holiday dinner tables covered with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberries and gravy. Is it just me or does the camera tend to linger on the gravy a little longer than on anything else? Oh sure the turkey gets its share of premium screen time but the gravy always seems to steal the show.

I’m watching the turkey and dreaming of that tryptophan high, when the next thing I know there’s someone pouring gravy all over everything – the turkey, the potatoes, the stuffing, and the cranberry sauce. For someone with my condition, it makes those holiday TV specials even more painful to watch.

Then there are all those trips to the grocery store and the encounters with the pyramids of jarred and canned gravy. Even a gravy-hater like me knows that anything more unappetizing than gravy is gravy that’s sat in a can since last July.

But the cou de grâce for a genuine gravyphobe like myself comes when I sit down at the holiday dinner table.

You see in the Midwest it’s a huge social gaffe not to eat gravy at Thanksgiving and Christmas. In some circles, it might be better to tell everyone you’re an atheist or to blow your nose in the linen napkins than to refuse to eat the gravy. People make comments such as, “Exactly, what do you mean you don’t eat gravy?”

When some people discover my non-gravy preference, they go for the jugular, capitalizing on this perceived weakness. They say things like “Boy this is the best gravy ever! Mmmmmm! Sure you don’t want to try some?” Or, “How about some gravy on that plate?” as they wave the ladle dangerously under my nose. If they only knew how close they were to seeing my dinner in reruns.

I try to take this all in stride, knowing someday I will be vindicated. With all the talk about saturated fats, clogged arteries and organic foods, gravy is sure to fall from grace at some point here on the Great Plains. Someday, I predict, eating gravy will be like smoking. Restaurants will have gravy and non-gravy sections. People will wear little gravy patches to get through the holidays gravy-free.

This year I’ve taken on a new strategy. I’m hosting Thanksgiving at my house, an official gravy-free zone.

Unless they BYOG, I won’t have to hear those discouraging words – “Please pass the gravy.”

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