Maxims, Axioms, and Chicken Salad

I know I have written about onions in the past. On several occasions, actually. But I have no problem writing about them again. Frankly, I cannot get over these things. Every time I find myself chopping them (and subsequently barreled over holding my eyes), I wonder why on earth these things are on earth. Maybe my eyes aren't quite "broken in" yet, but every time I split their bodies in half, peal that stupid brown paper off of them, and begin "finely chopping" them, I soon find myself in pain. And I begin cursing them in my heart. And I start thinking things like, "Onions are stupid. Why do we even eat these things. I hate them." And the curse-fest continues.

But tonight something new happened. Aside from my internal torrential hate affair, I thought about our forefathers and how a primitive generation would first experience the pungent face-punching fumes of opened onions. You have to wonder what this would be like. You're walking along the field/garden/vesta and you come upon an onion. So you pull it from the ground (they do come from the ground, right?) and take it back home to enjoy it. Maybe you think to peal the stupid brown paper. Maybe you don't. Either way, you somehow get into this newly discovered vegetable only to newly discover its ability to bring you to your knees. So you huck it from your presence like a baseball (or hot potato), cursing it as a "vile weed." Who would want to return and try it again - knowing it will burn out your retinas with its poisonous fumes? Why did our forefathers give it another shot? Maybe they thought, "Next time, it won't set my eyeballs on fire."

Or maybe they thought, "I really like that stupid brown paper that covers it."

Or perhaps they thought, "If we keep eating them, our children's children's children will eat them, thinking it is normal to sit over a kitchen counter weeping for 15 minutes."

But most likely they thought, "Why does 'Llama' have two L's in it? A silent "L"? Come on."