Texture Matters

I'm a texture person. As in, I am acutely aware of the textures of basically everything I encounter and have distinct feelings about pretty much every material or food I touch or eat, respectively. This is all well and good for those things which my senses are ok with, but ohhh boy the shizzle hits the fizzle when it comes to unpleasant items. Probably the most noteworthy example of this is styrofoam. The very word brings goosebumps over my whole body and a chill down my spine. I hate styrofoam. If I never had to touch it, hear someone else touch it, or otherwise deal with it for the rest of my life, I would be completely happy. Unfortunately for me, some of the "shelves" in my room are made of 3 inch thick styrofoam so I have to confront this issue pretty much on a daily basis. I consider myself President of the "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger" club. I don't know what it is for you- but imagine the typical "nails on a chalkboard" thing magnified times ten. Seriously though, think of alllll the things that include styrofoam- lots of disposable products (take-out boxes, cups, plates, at least in America), packing products (ahhhh styrofoam peanuts!), and packing in appliance boxes (those styrofoam molds that hold in your new DVD player!). Ick. Ick. Ick. A friend once said, "So, if someone wanted to tortuously extract information from you, the best way would be to tie you up and have people rubbing styrofoam on you while other people scratch on styrofoam right near your ears?" Thanks for that mental image. And yes.

Two other materials that fall into this category are velvet and suede. Or rather, velvety suede. Like not quiet velvet and not quiet suede but somewhere in between. It's the material that you sometimes find on the outside of photo albums. While I don't like to touch this, I can handle it if there is no movement of my hand over the material- just stationary holdage.

Moving on to food. Oh glorious food, how I love thee. Thanks in large part to my parents who exposed me to a vast array of foods as a child, I eat pretty much anything, and I'll certainly try (most) anything once. Unless of course it is of a styrofoam texture. Like rice cakes, mascarpone, or cheese poofy items. Here in Romania there is a really really common (and cheap) snack called Pooflets (I don't really know if that's spelled correctly). But they're literally salted styrofoam as far as my mouth is concerned. I see people eating whole bags of them. Entire bags. Hundreds of styrofoam pellets down the hatch. Oh my word, shoot me now.

One final thing about food is mixing crunchy and smooth textures. So yea, not so much into crunchy peanut butter. Or celery in tuna salad- my lifelong search for tuna salad at a restaurant that doesn't include celery continues! Or nuts in jello salad. I will take a pass on all those items, thank you very much. I just don't like the surprise element of it all. Like you're never quite sure whether it's smooth or crunchy, and you're enjoying the smoothness of it all and CRUNCH, there goes your serenity.

My question is- am I the only one who deals with this kind of thing? The only one who has such distinct feelings about textures? Please leave a comment if you'd like to join my EAT Club, aka the Extremely Agitating Textures Club. Thanks.