In the 1950’s one of the laundry detergent companies had a promotion in which they included a piece of dinnerware in the box.  By buying enough, you could collect a full set of plates, bowls and cups.   We were one of many families who eagerly collected the set.  Other detergent brands packed glasses and towels in their detergent boxes.

The dishes were not wrapped in any way; they were just immersed in the detergent inside the box.  I became convinced (I was maybe 6 years old) that having spent so much time in a detergent box, the dishes had absorbed some of the chemicals that could never be washed off, therefore rendering these plate permanently poisonous.

I insisted that I would not eat from any of this contaminated dinnerware.  My mother indulged me and my place setting always included only our older, less colorful plates.

My teenage sister Sheila wasn’t as nice.  More than once, she served me food in a poison dish.  For example, by filling a bowl of ice cream just right, she would hide the floral pattern.  I would eat the ice cream until the pattern was exposed and be thrown into a panic, convinced that I had just swallowed laundry detergent.

My sister thought this was great sport and spent considerable effort to trick me into eating poison food.  She even managed to get the last laugh decades later by sending me a poison bowl she had found at a garage sale as my birthday present.