You know what’s crazy. I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
How few things my 11-year-old son will actually eat.
“What did you eat for dinner?” I will ask all ready knowing the answer.
“A bagel,” he will say, his eyes scanning his feet.
“A bagel?” I will scowl. “Is that it? A bagel?”
“That’s all I want,” he says. “It has raisins. Raisins are good for you.”
“That’s not dinner, son. Dinner is chicken and gravy. Dinner is roast beef and green beans. Dinner is steak and potatoes. And raisins are jut tiny prunes and prunes help you poop.”
He stares at me with that “what the hell is this old man spewing forth from his face, kinda look.
“A bagel is all I want,” he counters.
“Is that what you want? Food that makes you poop?”
“Dad!”
“Well at least put some butter on it. You need the calcium. And that will count as dairy as well. A bagel and butter, that’s like 2 whole food groups,” I say faceitiously.
“OK,” he shrugs.
And so it goes. This war of caloric intake we have been waging for a decade.
For my boy, breakfast is a pop tart.
Kelloggs has effectively convinced an entire generation that sugar and blue goo is a food group nutritious enough to start your day.
All the essential vitamins and nutritional requirements of glass.
Lunch for my 11-year-old is potato chips and and a chocolate cookie. It’s a spoonful of sugar and a hershey’s bar chilled in the crisper.
He has never eaten a hamburger, a pork chop, a piece of chicken. He is repulsed by fish, and forget salad. He won’t drink soda, or juice or gatorade.
My son is a food freak of nature. He’s like the elusive push-me pull-you on the island of Doctor Crazy.
What will he drink? Milk and water. Water and Milk. That is his liquid sustenance. Milk and Water. Vegatative patients in the mental ward have a more creative palet.
Solid food?
The KKK is more accepting.
What he’ll eat is so limiting, it can be fit on one plate. I can literally name the foods he will eat in one run on sentence :Pizza-hotdog-salami-quesadilla.
That’s it. You can fit his food group on the nose of an angry proton.
Desert? Now that’s where my little man gets creative. Sugar Frosted Flakes for desert. Chocolate ice cream and Whip Cream whip its for desert.
My son is a candy carnivore. there is not a tooth in his mouth that is not sweet. I know, I pay the dental bills.
My step-mom use to put spinach in front of me and make me sit at the table until I finished everthing on my plate.
I remember gagging, trying to force it down my esophagus. It felt like seaweed. It tasted like algae. Just the thought of it, makes me shake.
I remember falling asleep at the table. Is that really good parenting? Are a billion Chinese really starving? Who cares?
Maybe that is why I don’t make a big deal out of what he eats. He is skinny, but he is athletic and fast. He has great reflexes and he moves like a cheetah chasing down a gazelle.
If he liked coke and Big Mac’s would he get heavy and then slow and then lose his “eye of the tiger”
I figure that one day he will expand his food tolerance, but for now, I’ll just have to deal with pancakes and powdered sugar for dinner.
And that is crazy!