Running down the stairs, my nose fills with the aromas of a home cooked meal. The scent of chicken leaks into my nostrils, and I could almost taste the garlic-mashed potatoes that were simmering on the stove. My mom calls me for dinner, but there’s no use, I was already half way to the kitchen, panting, and filled with hunger. As I reached the kitchen I hit a brick wall, a scent that I had never smelled before. It was an unpleasant one, one that I did not look forward to eating. My mom solved the mystery of the unknown smell as I sat down, ready to dig in. She told me that it was a vegetable called kale, and that I had to eat it.

I lifted a small mouthful towards my mouth. It looked like a hybrid of lettuce and spinach, not a good combination. It was a throw up green mixed with a little swamp, for dramatic color effect. The steam rose from its wrinkled flesh like a balloon that a small child accidently lets go of at a fair. That gross, green, wrinkled flesh; I shivered at the very sight of it. I still get nightmares some nights, and I can’t get through a visit with my grandmother without flinching at the familiar sight of wrinkles. Against my better judgment, I lifted the forkful towards my chattering mouth.

Before it even hit my mouth, I could smell the distasteful sludge, at least it gave me fair warning before it tried to kill me. The smell was worse than a dead fish slowly marinated in gym sock sweat. I gagged as the green wrinkled hairball got closer and closer to my mouth. Then, I shoved it straight into my mouth. This, of course, was a horrific idea, because immediately I gagged. I thought that I was about to see exactly what I ate two nights ago for dinner. But even the two-day-old spaghetti would be an improvement to the taste of the ghastly green wad of gross that was entering my body.

The taste was beyond belief. I thought that the taste of dirt was bad, but that was a five star steak compared to kale. I would eat the gum underneath the seat of my seat on the bus every morning before I eat kale again. The taste burnt my taste buds, preventing me from enjoying the actual food that was in front of me. I finally forced down my first forkful, with much retaliation from my throat. Looking down, I saw that I had another ten, at least, forkfuls of the gunk left. I put as much as I could on my fork, grabbed my water, shoved the blob into my mouth, and then gulped water like I had just spent a year in the Sahara with no water. The food, if you could even call it that, slipped down my throat like a slug on a wall. Unfortunately, this slug didn’t shrink when salt was applied; trust me I tried.

I finally finished my helping of alien spinach after my body could no longer gag, cough, choke, or spit up the slime, and could only lie there until it was over. To this day, I walk to dinner with caution, praying that what I smell is just a mixture of my dirty underwear and unwashed hair. So far, I’ve been lucky, no kale. It was a close call once, though, but it turned out that it was just my dad’s sad attempt at making a garden salad.