From a traditional standpoint, tuna salad is made up of four essential components:

• Canned tuna
• Mayonnaise
• Pickles
• Hard boiled eggs

The number of times that Mom or Dad made tuna salad in my formative years is countless.  I can remember having that stuff smeared on a couple of pieces of Wonder bread (white, of course) and accompanied by a good handful of Ruffles.

There was that one time when the family all packed up and went out to Alcova Lake for a day of fishing.  We had packed all of the necessities for such a day trip, and managed to top our supplies list off with a bag of Cheetos and a six pack of Shasta purchased at a gas station just a matter of miles from the lake.  Among the supplies which got packed was a green Tupperware bowl full of tuna salad.

Naturally the memory of a day trip to the lake armed with fishing gear and the makings for a tuna salad sandwich serve as an amalgam of childhood events which all seem to run together.  Whether we picked up Cheetos and Shasta that day or not is immaterial, but I can assure you we picked them up for one of those trips at one point or another.

The interesting thing I remember about that day was that I had caught the biggest fish and that things were particularly muddy.  Things were so muddy , in fact, that the sedan we were riding in got stuck.

Bad.

It seems like it took Dad forever to get us out of that mess.  Mom, my brother and I stayed in the car while Dad worked outside at the rear of the car trying to rock it out of the muddy mess. At one point, he used a bumper jack to lift the rear of the car in hopes of liberating the car.

Big picture, it probably didn’t take forever.  In the mind of a 7 or 8 year old kid, forever gets measured in 20 minute increments.

During that time while we waited in the car and Dad explored various forms of mechanical engineering to negotiate a mid-70’s sedan out of a nasty Wyoming mud hole, we dined on tuna salad sandwiches, Ruffles potato chips, and Shasta crème soda.

Obviously we got out.  I wouldn’t be here talking about it right now otherwise.

Duh.

I would have to say, the last time I had one of those tuna salad sandwiches was sometime in my teenaged years when I still lived at home.

You see in all of those years since I left home, I’ve never made myself a batch of tuna salad, smeared it on Wonder bread, and chased it with Ruffles and Shasta.

You see, I don’t like tuna.  I never have.

I don’t like mayonnaise.  I never have.

I don’t like pickles.  I never have.

I don’t like hard boiled eggs.  I never have.

For whatever reason, I could eat the tuna salad and like it.

I would imagine the operative word there is ‘could’.

Welcome to one of my many mental hang-ups.