I remember it like it was yesterday. I was eight years old, and I had just enjoyed a gourmet Thursday night meal of frozen chicken nuggets with my family. There were the crispy nuggets, golden-brown and formed into dinosaur-shaped chunks; the shoestring fries, salted with zeal; the side of canned peas so we weren’t just consuming a whole plate full of brown.
Like that of any respectable family on chicken nugget night, our kitchen table was also dotted with condiments: the mayonnaise in the squeeze bottle, barely touched, and the bright yellow mustard that only my brother used sat there, waiting to be put back into the fridge. The star of the show, though, was the ketchup. As an eight-year-old, there was no alternative to the sugary condiment. Chicken nuggets and fries simply had to be adorned with the red gloop. There was no other way; I didn’t make the rules of the universe. Childlike, innocent, I believed that ketchup was a given, a requirement, and I never expected it to do me wrong.
But then came the time to clear my plate. I stepped up to the stool that stood waiting in front of the kitchen sink so I could reach the running water. I placed my plate, which looked like a crime scene from the unceremonious smears of ketchup all over it, under the hot running water. Suddenly, I was assaulted with the most abhorrent scent I had ever experienced in my almost decade of life at that point. It was at this moment I realized how horrible ketchup truly is. When enhanced by the running water, the scent of the slimy, sugary abomination became unbearable. It smelled like the rotting pumpkin we had thrown out the previous November after we came home to find our porch buzzing with flies. I was horrified. How could I have not realized what a crime, what a travesty ketchup clearly was?
This moment with the leftover ketchup falling from my dirty plate in globs, stinking and clogging the kitchen sink, began a lifelong hatred of the ubiquitous condiment. Go to any fast food restaurant and there it is, outshining the mustard and mayo at every turn. Every diner, ever upscale burger spot, every junk food counter at every college’s food hall features it boldly, prominently, like we don’t all know what trash it is. So I’m here to say what has to be said, once and for all: Ketchup is indisputably the worst condiment in the entire American fast food repertoire of dips, sauces and relishes.