Mayo by Default

It’s a Saturday night and you and your significant other have decided to splurge on a nice meal.  You’ve sucked down a few tasty libations, something with vodka and a half-dozen other ingredients that you swear is going to be your summer cocktail, and you’ve placed your order.  It could be a sandwich, a hamburger, an appetizer, or even a sushi roll, anywhere on the spectrum from simple ingredients to complex.  It doesn’t matter.  You’re hungry.

After a salivary delay, the object of your gustatory affection arrives.  The waitress places it on the table and scurries off before you can comment.  You look at it.  Something’s not right.  Something very white is slathered, simmering, or circulating on your formerly palatable meal.  You begin to dry heave.  The room spins.  Your rosy complexion blanches.  You’ve been “mayo’ed.”

Mayo’ed

The Oxford English Dictionary defines mayo’ed as “the art and practice of applying the stomach-churning condiment of mayonnaise indiscriminately to a given edible object, thereby rendering it inedible and suitable only for compost.”  Don’t believe me?  Go ahead.  Look it up.  I dare you…

Okay, maybe it doesn’t use the phrase “stomach churning,” and maybe there isn’t an actual entry for the term “mayo’ed” at all.  But there ought to be.  It ought to be a criminal offence, punishable by jail time and probation on a Betty Crocker Bake Set.

Origins?

I have no idea where this concept originated, or who’s responsible for the ubiquitous presence of mayonnaise, particularly on dishes where it has no business being.  It seems as though it’s the default condiment for western culture.  How did this happen?  And why wasn’t I consulted?

What’s the origin story for this travesty?  Who’s the Marvel supervillain who started it?  Mayo-man?  Condiment-or?  Let me guess how it happened.  He fell into a vat of toxic, radioactive mayonnaise?  Bacteria from a rancid jar of mayo seeped into his bloodstream and infected him?  A lab experiment testing the carcinogenic impact of mutant mayo exploded in his face?  There has to be a reason.

Forever tainted, this evil villain searches for sandwiches to ruin, appetizers to destroy, and sushi to decimate.  No hamburger, no dip, no dressing is safe.  Beware.  Consider yourselves warned.

A Critical Condiment

Nothing ruins a meal more for me than the last-second discovery that I’ve been mayo’ed.  What could be worse?  No one wants to my gagging and dry heaving.  Can we all agree to let each other make our own decisions about this critical condiment?  I opt out.  How about you?