Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Everyone hates turnips.
The fact that turnips rank first among my siblings’ most hated vegetables should come as no surprise. No one likes them. Unfortunately, turnips were the main crop grown in my grandmother’s vegetable garden, which meant that we’d have to eat “angry collards” every winter. But when it comes to me and my siblings, our second-most hated vegetable occupies a special place on our hate index of distaste.
My sisters hated okra.
According to my oldest sister Seandra (we called her Sean), biting into an okra plant was like chewing on a snot rag. My grandmother would plant okra in the summer and turnips in the fall. But because a small garden can produce much more okra than turnips, we always had an abundant, year-round supply of okra. And if my mother cooked it, my sisters and I had to eat it. We weren’t even offered a choice between eating okra and not eating. In our household, you ate whatever my mother cooked or you could meet your inevitable death and see what Jesus was serving in the afterlife. So, whenever okra was served, my sister dry-heaved her way through digesting her phlegm-filled vegetable nemesis.
Always the entrepreneur, I made a deal with Sean. Whenever we had okra, I’d eat hers in exchange for a favor to be named later (usually performing some of my assigned household chores). When my other two sisters found out about the secret okra accord, they started offering me favors to eat their okra — even though they didn’t hate it as much as Sean.
Favors were the official currency of the Harriot household. We used our personal diaries as accounting ledgers to keep track of our intra-household favor racketeering ring. (I kinda feel sorry for my mom for buying the dairies because she thought she had finally convinced us to get into journaling). I…
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