The Mold of Old

So I've been on a strawberry kick lately. They've officially replaced my obsession with watermelon. A few containers a week habit. I wash em in the plastic container with the holes in it, dump em in a bowl, and just sit here mawing down all the strawberries in one sitting.

But here's the question, once or twice now I've opened up my thing of strawberries and noticed a strawberry or two that has like gross blueish white mold growing all over it. Like it got singled out and totally contaminated. Gross. I know that it should be no big deal. Most people probably get rid of the moldy one and move on. But I can't enjoy the rest of the strawberries after I see one grodified one because I think the mold flecks are now all over all the strawberries and they're all invisibly contaminated with gross mold. I've tried to overcome this mold thing but I simply can't get past it.

I think my issues with mold goes way back to when I was a little kid. I slept over at a friend's house and in the morning for breakfast his mom gave us bagels. She put a Philadelphia Cream Cheese container on the table and I opened it up. Inside it was a big green/yellow sporky looking mold ball! It looked like a sea creature! I squealed a little and the mom came over and scooped out the mold ball and then told me the rest of the cream cheese was fine.

I wasn't sure about it and hesitated. I just sat there staring at my naked bagel not sure what to do. But groaned a little at me and took a butter knife and grumpily spread the cream cheese all over my bagel anyway-- insisting it was fine. My friend didn't seem to mind. I guess he was used to it. I felt weird not eating it because I might offend her or feel wimpy or cause I was a kid-- so I ate it. Every bite I felt like I could taste the mold. I imagined my stomach all active and filling up with new green/yellow mold balls like popcorn.

So since then I've been a little extra mold phobic (although I have no issues with blue cheese-- even though I don't like thinking about it). But is it so totally irrational for me to throw out a whole thing of perfectly good strawberries just because one got covered in mold? I'm too embarrassed to return them because I can imagine the fruit guy picking out the moldy one and handing the container back to me and calling me a mold (wimp)*. I realize the mold can't hurt me really and it's probably loaded with moldy anti-biotical penicilific nutrients or whatever. But I can't get past it...

For now on I think I just need to check my strawberry boxes before buying em-- like a carton of eggs.

ok bye!
tOdd

*apologies for being offensive to some for no good reason. it's not what this site is about. scroll down if you wanna know mo etc