Methinks Thou Dost Ketchup Too Much

The Pony loves ketchup. Some might say he's addicted to it. He will drench any foodstuff with ketchup before even trying it au naturale. I toyed with the idea of getting him a ketchup T-shirt a couple of Christmases ago. It was bright red, emblazoned with the proclamation: "I put ketchup on my ketchup." So appropriate, yet so unlike The Pony to wear his condiment preferences between his sleeves.

I did, however, get him the ketchup game. I can't find it now, but it was a little cardboard card game that came in a box that looked like a bottle of ketchup. The Pony has never played it. If it was the real thing, he would be all over it, chugging it, slurping it, downing shots of it from a ramekin, slathering it on his skin for absorption. If it was socially acceptable, The Pony would drape himself in ketchup.

I enjoy a little ketchup myself every now and then. I've been known to bite the end off a foil packet, and suck out squirts to accompany Sonic tater tots. They're so messy in the car.

My long-ago friend Kelsie, from my pre-Nementia teaching days, even took a giant bag of powdered reddish dust given to her by me through Farmer H, and faithfully mixed it with water every night to use in place of ketchup. She said her husband the engineering student liked it just as well. And it was FREE. Let the record show that Farmer H did not simply bag dust out of his factory. It was an actual product associated with his company, whose bread and butter was making saw blades for butcher shops.

At school, there's a giant can of ketchup, with a pump spout that the "cooks" pop on top. Woe is the student who bellies up to the condiment cart and finds that the ketchup can only emits a phhttt phhttt and spray of watery red droplets onto the tray. They are provided tiny fluted paper cups for ketchup-holding, but few used them. Are you kidding? When they can fill a whole section of that plastic tray with ketchup? Oh. Sorry. I was thinking about what I would do.

Comedian Kathleen Madigan says John Kerry could handily win an election by simply saying: “Hi, I'm John Kerry and I'm running for president. If you don't vote for me, I am going to take away all of the ketchup."

Ketchup. It really cuts the mustard.