Gregory Pittman

Nope

Here, now, a list of things I dislike, or hate, or otherwise avoid at all costs.

Cheese

My mother grew up in an orphanage. Like, Little Orphan Annie orphanage. As she tells it, she was forced to eat "government cheese" at every meal from the time she entered the facility at age 3 (that backstory is actually pretty sad) to the time she graduated and left at age 18. That's a lot of government cheese. So she grew to hate it. Fast forward to my growing up years, she never used cheese in the meals she cooked. Never. So the first time I ate cheese was probably when I was in middle school, or maybe even later, when we ordered the occasional pizza. We were pretty poor, so I don't actually remember when I first ate pizza. Anyway, long story short, I never developed a taste for cheese. "You have to develop a taste for cheese?" you might ask. Yes. Yes, you do. Much to my wife's chagrin because she lives for cheese. She says I'm way too picky; I prefer to say I'm discerning.

Heights

Because… heights. Why go way up high when there's a perfectly solid and safe down low?

Rats

Remember when I was talking about cheese earlier and I said I grew up poor? That's true. Our house had rotting floorboards over which our landlord had simply placed carpet. The ceiling had little holes in it through which we could see sky, which meant the roof also had holes in it. But my parents did the very best they could and, as a kid, I never once recall realizing just how poor we were.

Anyway, let me set the scene. Our house had what we called "the back porch," some semblance of an enclosed add-on for which I can only guess our landlord scoffed at the idea of a permit because, let me tell you, it was barely standing. The back porch is where our laundry machines and a whole bunch of junk lived. My younger brother had previously had a 5-gallon tank for a beta fish. When the fish died, my mom placed the tank and all of its accoutrement on the back porch, for safe keeping. I guess.

One evening, I was moving laundry from our washing machine to our dryer at my mother's request. As I turned around to re-enter the main part of the house, I looked toward the fish tank, which stood at least twelve inches tall, and out of it was climbing a rat. Really, if I'm being honest—and totally objective—it was a monster. Rob Reiner would later come and take down my story for inspiration for the R.O.U.S. in The Princess Bride.

The rat's hind legs were on the tank's floor, his front paws were on the rim of the tank, and his head was peering over his paws. This rat was over a foot tall, y'all. I ran in place, screaming silently, for who knows how long and finally gained enough traction to jump backwards onto the washing machine. The rat eventually climbed out of the tank and ambled its way back behind some of the other items nearby and I got the heck off the back porch as quickly as I could.

So, yeah, I hate rats! And, yes. This story really happened more or less exactly as I have relayed it here. This is not AI slop. I wish it were.

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