A web advertisement just caught my eye. "Lose 25 pounds in 20 days with green tea." I didn't investigate. I don't need to lose 20 pounds. Pity, because green tea would certainly do the trick for me. A cup of that loathsome liquid and I'd instantly bring up anything I'd eaten. Green tea and I are cat and dog. We don't get along.

I'm not sure why the taste and odor of green tea revolts me. I love regular tea and various tea varieties. What is better than Earl Grey? In my younger days I was a tea addict. During my teens I never sat down without a cup of tea with a slice of lemon close at hand. Yeah, I was a wild kid.

As I got older the top of my refrigerator and my kitchen window sills were always crowded with polar bears, monkeys, rabbits and all the other porcelain figurines they put in the big boxes of Red Rose.

But there's something just plain wrong about green tea. It's as if it were something...else...something pretending to be tea but not getting it quite right.

As far as I know I was simply born hating green tea. There's no history between us that I recall. I didn't drink green tea with the great love of my life before she set off on the Titanic. No one ever tried to drown me in a vat of the the stuff.

I just don't like it, and I don't have any intention of trying to. You can't teach an old dog to like cats.