In high school, we had this librarian who all my friends seemed to love. He was young and geeky, but sassy as anything and had no problems tearing into the ‘popular’ kids who only went to the library to cut class. He was the tennis coach, the Magic Club sponsor, and filmed all the school’s events. Naturally, all us younger geeks looked up to him—a fellow nerd who had risen above and now got to scream at and give detentions to the people we most disliked. Great teenager mentality.

This librarian (we’ll call him Mr. A) was on very good terms with all of my closest friends, but for some reason he hated my guts. As in, would glare at me openly from across the room and snap something sarcastic or just downright mean anytime I asked a question. I was quiet, shy, a blatant nerd. I’d never so much as turned in a book past its due date. So his animosity shocked me. Naturally, being a spiteful teenager, I grew to hate him as much as he did me. He was like my very own arch nemesis. Maybe it was because I was on the swim team, and we’d surpassed the tennis team as the school’s most successful/winning sport. Maybe he just really hated my emo haircut. But he always made sure to sneer in my direction whenever I dared enter his domain.

Anyways, in the library there was this one, odd rule that Mr. A had put into place. No mayonnaise. You could bring your lunch, your breakfast, heck—a full four course meal. But no mayonnaise. If it was visible on a sandwich or anything of the like, he would demand you throw it out. By my senior year, I’d discovered via the ever reliable high school grapevine that his hatred of the condiment stemmed from a drunken bet in college, where he had been dared to eat an entire jar of mayo. Apparently, he’d succeeded. Only to promptly vomit it up everywhere and swear off mayonnaise for the rest of his existence. At first it just made me laugh, but then I got an idea. A wonderful, awful, petty as all fuck idea.

I drove to the store and bought the biggest jar of mayonnaise I could find. I dumped it, scrubbed the insides, and then painstakingly refilled it with vanilla pudding—you know, the super gooey, oozy kind. The kind that comes in the single snack packs that doesn’t even have to be refrigerated. It wasn’t the best tasting goop, but it was tolerable enough, and had the exact color and consistency of mayonnaise.

The next day, I plopped my smug ass down at the library table that was directly in front of his desk. I pulled out the mayo jar and a big ol’ soup spoon, stared Mr. A dead in the eye, and proceeded to eat straight from it. Massive, oozing, spoonfuls that would probably make even non mayo-phobes gag. His face went white, then red. I could easily make out the veins popping in his temples, could see his throat working to swallow what was most certainly a massive bought of nausea. It took a sold thirty seconds for him to break free from his horrified trance to shriek at the top of his lungs, “GET OUT! GET OUT!”

So I took my jug and trudged out of there as slow as a snail on vacation, dripping ‘mayonnaise’ as I went and making as many God awful slurping noises as I could. All the while poor Mr. A looked just about ready to feint. Or at the very least lose his breakfast.

He later noticeably cut out my solo from the recording of our orchestra’s spring concert. But damn was it worth it.