As I’ve mentioned before, to the dismay of many, I do not eat peanut butter or drink coffee. Well, dear readers, get ready to once again be dismayed. Thanks to a conversation I had this week, I remembered another popular foodstuff I avoid – doughnuts.

Unlike peanut butter, which I have loathed since our first encounter, I spent years enjoying doughnuts. (I also drank coffee from childhood into adulthood.)

Indeed, one of my aunts is something of an expert when it comes to preparing doughnuts. She frequently made them for my cousins, my siblings, and me when we were wee lads and lasses growing up on and/or near the Goff Estate.

What’s more, one day in elementary school I, a lifelong cheapskate, agreed to go halfsies with a classmate and purchase a jelly doughnut. That was a big deal for me because I had never eaten a jelly doughnut.

And I didn’t eat one that day, either. When we cut into the doughnut, we discovered it was a glazed doughnut sans jelly. As you might be able to infer, I have not let go of that disappointment. Sometimes I wonder if my life would have turned out differently if I had gotten to eat one-half a jelly doughnut that day. Or if I had asked for a refund upon learning the doughnut was free of jelly. You never know. That could have been the turning point in my life.

Anyway, my sisters and I learned to make doughnuts and for years we would legit jump up at dern-near any hour of the day and whip up a platter of doughnuts. Then, for some reason I can’t recall, we stopped making them.

Maybe it was because we could more readily and easily purchase tasty doughnuts at the stores. And purchase them we did. As an adult, I discovered that jelly doughnuts left a bad aftertaste. This discovery elated me. So, I stuck to glazed or chocolate glazed.

But at some point a dozen or so years ago (it’s not like I noted the date in my journal), I realized that doughnuts made me feel, well, high. You might be saying to yourself, “Self, what’s wrong with that?” Nothing. Unless you’re feeling high at work.

Once I studied on the matter, I further realized this doughnut high had been occurring for some time. And it was always followed by a migraine.

Oh, there’s more. I also remembered that I had developed my first doughnut-induced migraine in college. Of course, that was a certain type of microwavable yeast doughnut that I swore off after it caused the second headache. These glazed – chocolate or plain – doughnuts hadn’t started bothering me until a dozen or so years ago.

What changed?

If I knew the answer to that question, I would be penning articles for medical journals.

All I know is that when I tell people I don’t eat doughnuts, I detect their disappointment. It’s as if they just cut into a plain doughnut…

This post originally appeared in the Appalachian News-Express.

I don’t drink coffee.

Most people react to this statement with disbelief. They stare at me with widened eyes and open mouths before peppering me with such questions as “Why not?” and “What’s wrong with you?”

There’s not enough bandwidth or time to properly answer that last question. As for coffee, unlike my aversion to peanut butter – another admission that folks struggle to understand – I don’t have anything against coffee. In fact, I enjoyed a cup a day for 20 years or so.

If memory serves, I started drinking coffee around age 11. By Goff Estate standards, that defined me as a late bloomer. I grew up in a family of coffee addicts who still drink the stuff all day. They’ve drunk it for so long that they’re immune to its caffeinated effects. Indeed, my mom and oldest sister have fallen asleep whilst drinking coffee.

At any time of the day, you’re likely to hear my mom, my sisters, or my nieces ask, “Whose turn is it to make a pot?” They go through coffee pots like they’re paper plates. Once, when Mother’s coffee pot started misbehaving, I said, “You’ve only had it for little more than a year and a half. Oh, wait, I guess that’s the life expectancy for a coffee pot around here.”

Of course, a single cup of instant coffee is not out of the question, either. Some people don’t care for what my late father referred to as boiled coffee. During my coffee-drinking days, I couldn’t tell the difference between instant and what he called percolated coffee. It all tasted the same to me.

Even back then, though, I wasn’t interested in anything like espresso or zucchini spiced mocha latte. And I’ll never grasp the concept of iced coffee. At the Goff Estate, iced coffee means you’ve talked so much that your previously-warm coffee needs “hottened up.”

Anyway, in adulthood, I finally sought help for my migraines. During a consultation with my doctor, he advised me to rid my life of caffeine. I complied, curbing my intake of chocolate, switching to caffeine free soda (that didn’t last), and quitting coffee.

If this change in lifestyle resulted in night tremors or hallucinations, I don’t remember them. Nor did I look at a cup of coffee with regret and longing.

Fast forward a decade or so later. Whilst making shortbread cookies one Christmas, my taste buds recalled that I had savored coffee with those cookies. Suddenly, I decided that one cup wouldn’t hurt. I poured some coffee and nibbled on a cookie as I waited on it to cool. As soon as I was sure it would not burn my tongue, I put the cup to my mouth, experienced my first sip of coffee in years and immediately said, “Yuck.”

It tasted terribly bitter and dern-near ruined the cookie. It also reminded me that when it comes to coffee, I’m not missing a thing.

This post originally appeared in the Appalachian News-Express.