The Garlic Freak
Warding off a personal demon
(9–17)
Charles James Worthington never tasted garlic until he was sixteen years old. It was on one of his first clumsy dates. It was on a double date, actually. It was the standard movie then pizza date. It was the first time Charles had ever eaten a pizza not made by his mother. He finally learned what real pizza was like and he also discovered garlic. (And girls.)
From that moment on Charles became wildly passionate about garlic. He did research on it. He went on a quest to try every ethnic cuisine that included garlic. He began going to grocery stores after school just to have a double handful of garlic in which to stick his nose.
How on earth could he have gone sixteen years of his life without any experience with garlic whatsoever?
It was because of his mother. The family never ate out in those sixteen years. Charles’ mother was an extreme penny pincher. She knew how to feed a family of seven on less than a buck-fifty. The only food Chucky (he was called Chucky back then) ever tasted was his mother’s cooking. Even the seemingly thousands of sack lunches that Chucky had eaten at school were made by her.
And she hated garlic. She hated it so much that she vehemently refused to even allow it in her home. Chucky learned this when his…
