A Little Cheesy

I’ve been wondering about cheese. People love cheese. Extra cheese on my pizza, please. Load those nachos up with double cheese. But it’s a love-hate kinda thing, isn’t it?

Because when you think about it, some not so pleasant things are associated with the word cheese.

When folks say something is cheesy, well, it is generally not meant in a positive sense. When we get mad some of us get cheesed off. And of course there’s nothing good whatsoever about the phrase “cut the cheese.” Unless you’re five and farting still makes perfect sense as a joke. Or you’re forty and in a quiet church and somebody rips one on a pew. Of course, we also have toe cheese and another particularly nasty bodily cheese reference I won’t mention here. If you have no clue what I mean, trust me, you don’t want to know.

And then there’s the smell factor. Ever been in a real cheese shop? I have. In Holland. I’m not sure I have ever smelled anything quite like it. Except maybe a couple weeks ago when I was lucky enough to be waiting in a parking lot next to an open septic tank cleaning operation. I was pulling cheese off stuff for a couple weeks after being in that shop. It was no Gouda.

Oh, and then there’s that blue cheese stuff. Now I’m as happy as the next guy to have my food covered with a half inch of mold, but…well, it’s good on hot wings, so what the hell. And do we really want to see cheese made? I know there’s nothing I enjoy more than watching milk curdle.

And of course foot odor come remarkably close to what I smelled in that cheese shop. And don’t even get me started on Cheese Whiz…

Oh, well, still we love cheese, despite its bad connotations and pungent properties. Unless you’re lactose intolerant, of course. But that’s a whole other column…