SATAN

One of the pitfalls of spending a lot of time by yourself is the tendency to verbalize random thoughts. Out loud. When you live alone, it hardly poses any problem. But then, say you start to re-integrate into society by maybe, I dunno, joining a gym, because in your hermetically-sealed state, maybe you got out of shape and added a few pounds. So then maybe you start going to this gym and maybe you're reading "Self" magazine while using the Stairclimber(tm) and maybe you're reading an article where someone has written in, concerned about the health of their born-again vegan friend and maybe the responder mentions that their vegan friend can obtain the recommended daily allowance of protein by preparing food made using SEITAN.

And then maybe you flash back to the first time you were introduced to SEITAN, Thanksgiving of 1995, when you were invited to your Vegan friend's house for T-day dinner and instead of cooking a real turkey, they cooked a turkey-shaped loaf of SEITAN. Now remember, the only reason you accepted this invitation to begin with was to 1) avoid your own hopelessly dysfunctional family and 2) to ogle the husband of one of the guests, of whom you've had a crush on from the first moment you laid eyes on him. And despite the earnest attempts by your hosts to be righteous in their veganism (Please, DO NOT notice the leather chairs in their living room. Please.) you find yourself out on the deck with the smokers chanting over and over "SEITAN SEITAN SEITAN SEITAN SEITAN..." And it's funny, you see, because SEITAN is pronounced the same as SATAN. And every time after that day, whenever you've ever seen the word SEITAN in print, you, in your most evil, Linda Purl Exorcist voice, compulsively hiss, "SATAN," aloud. Every time. It can't be helped any more than my OCD friend touching the light switch 5 times before he leaves a room. 

Flash forward to the gym in Mount Vernon, full of people from America's Heartland, and there's a woman on the Stairclimber(tm) who, for no apparent reason, breathlessly hisses "SATAN."