Warning: This blog post may contain semi-offensive material to fans of pie, fans of blood-sucking trendy romance novels turned into movies on the silver screen, and other American traditions .

I have a few confessions to make from the dark depths of my soul.

First of all, I don’t like pie. This doesn’t sound like a big deal, right? But people get really upset about distaste for those round fruit-filled pastry creations. Every Thanksgiving, without fail, someone will try to alter my preference and pursuade me to have a taste. It’s worse than any peer pressure I ever felt in high school. “C’mon. Just take one taste. You’ll like mine.” You don’t want to insult folks and it seems incomprehensible to the biggest pie fans that someone wouldn’t want to indulge in an American tradition.

But I don’t like it. I can’t even force it down these days. I used to politely nibble on a little bit of apple pie, but no longer can I keep up the charade. The pie hoax is over.

I’m also not a Twi-ard. In fact, I’m not even close. I haven’t read the Twighlight books even though the black and red books sit in all their glory on my bookshelf (thanks to a wonderful friend who brought them over for me to read while I recovered from surgery earlier this year). I haven’t seen a single movie about the vampire romance that has taken the female world by storm even though I’ve been invited multiple times.

 I’ve thought long and hard about making this confession public and I feel like I’m ready to come out in the open about this topic. I do it for women everywhere who have been reduced to whispering these confessions under the breath and in dark corners. (Just like the anti-pie folks that unite every holiday season and make up excuses like, “I’m on a diet,” or “I’m pie intolerant.” )

However, I recognize that I have many dear friends who love and adore the books and count down the days until they can see the midnight release of the movies. I have had my own pop-culture obsessions over the years and I can completely understand the cravings for more of the media that we fixate and frenzy over. (Or that I obsess over a daily chocolate fix and I’ve actually known people who can’t stand the dark brown indulgence.)

Who knows, I may actually enjoy the tale of blood sucking teenage lust if I actually had the time to sit down and read a novel. But in my heart of hearts I’ve tried to force myself down this road before and I always regret it. It reminds me of wearing Guess Jeans in junior high school. I scrimped, saved, and sacrificed to have my very own pair of acid-washed denim, but once I wore them in all of their glory I thought to myself, I’m really not getting the high from this that I expected and I’m not sure it was worth all I had forfeited.

So I have to look at myself and ask, Why should I cave to peer pressure if this latest fad isn’t my thing? How old am I? Am I really going to take a bite of this dessert just to please everyone at the table staring at me in disbelief?  

I know now that I wasn’t the only one in junior high that now felt that sporting that upside-down triangle on my back pocket wasn’t really worth it. But I never admitted it back then. But I’m brave enough now to come clean and rise against the popular tide. I came out about my true feelings about pie and I’m certain that I’m not the only hiding out in obscurity afraid to admit that I’ve never hit play on the mega-thriller vampire love triangle. Myself and others in hiding live in fear that the die hard Twi-ards will pounce in defense of their beloved Bella.

Twilight fans shouldn’t be offended that I haven’t run out to partake of the killer equation (Vampires + Teen Angst = Wildly Popular Romantic Thriller.) You see, this isn’t the first fad that I’ve boycotted. I’ve never seen a Harry Potter movie or read the books. Never partaken of the Trilogy involving Rings or Lords –neither in audio visual format or the literary version. I’ve also never seen any of what I call the Giant Dinosaur movies from the 1990s.

 I’ve learned over the years of admitting these deep and somewhat snobbish confessions only brings near ostracism from those devotees. They try to convert me to their ways. They pile on the guilt as they grill me like Tom Cruise’s character questioning Jack Nicholson’s character on the stand in A Few Good Men. It starts with innocent questions about “foot lockers and phonecalls” (or borrowed books and DVDs) and then turns into an outraged confessional and I feel like responding in classic Jack fashion by saying, “You want the truth. You can’t handle the truth. I don’t like pre-pubescent wizard movies and you can’t make me watch it.”

(Go ahead and say it. Here it comes. “Lighten up.”)

Question: What social-must do you rebel against? Is there an American tradition that you do not like?