You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
What my son considers food.
Pop Tarts? He considers that its own unique and special food group.
Filet Mignon? Feed it to the pigs.
Ball Park Franks? A gift from the meat packing Gods.
Lasagna? Whose stupid idea was this?
My son is a culinary anomaly.
He is thin like a deer, and just as quick. He is wiry and teen age boy tough.
But how he is still alive is really unknown to me?
He is stone henge with teeth. I don’t understand what keeps him alive. He looks more like an Ethiopian marathoner than a Tennessee Teen.
“Did you eat?”
“yeah”
“What?”
“I had some cookies.”
“That’s not food.”
“Yes it is.”
And so it goes.
13 years of age and he has never had a coke, a soda an orange juice. He has never tried 7up or lemonade or apple juice. An Arnold Palmer? That’s two things he wouldn’t consume combined as one thing.
His only beverages of choice? MILK and WATER.
That’s it. 13 years of fluids going into his body, and it is only Milk or Water.
If we are in a restaurant he might splurge and order a chocolate milk. If not, then it is water, hold the lemon.
Prisoners on death row have more variety.
My son could win the reward challenge on survivor and he wouldn’t like the reward.
“A big juicy hamburger” Jeff Probst could holler.
My son would trade it in for a coconut.
Fearing he is not getting the caloric intake he needs to grow taller than a circus midget, I tried recently to get him to eat something with sustenance.
He doesn’t like eggs or chicken or pork. He won’t eat peanut butter and jelly or fish.
He eats coca puffs for Thanksgiving for Goodness sakes. It’s absurd.
Have you ever had breakfast cereal with gravy?
His food group is pretty much a trip to the ball park.
Pizza, hot dogs, and bacon.
Thank God for Bacon.
When this kid eats in public, I feel like I’m going to be arrested by the department of children’s services.
So I go to the Publix butcher and say give me your juiciest steak.
He grabs a hold of the $18.00 per pound Filet Mignon and says;
“how’s this?”
“It looks delicious.”
My mouth starts watering. I need a lobster bib just to contain my enthusiasm. All I know is I want to throw this hunk of meat on the grill immediately.
“Wrap it up,” I say with a hungry alacrity.
I bring it home and show him this exquisite slab of beef.
It is juicy and red, without much fat or veins.
If this steak was modeling, it would be on the cover of Vogue.
What an absolutely delicious hunk of beef.
Somewhere out there is a cow who can smile proudly knowing this came from its hind quarters.
“What do you think?” I say a little nervously, holding the hunk of beef up like it’s a new kitten.
“It looks kind of good,” he says sheepishly.
“I’m throwing it on the bar b que. You ready?”
“OK,” he says with all the commitment of a bad boy friend.
I put on a pinch of salt and throw it on the grill. It makes a delightful sizzling sound and the smoke that emanates from the grill is heavenly.
I imagine hyenas in the mountains, catching a whiff of this unbelievably delicious piece of meat.
Like zombies in a meat induced trance they will come fangs showing.
I cook it on one side for 6 minutes and flip it over.
SIZZZLE.
The top is golden brown with precise grill marks running down the side.
It is so good I can hardly wait. It looks like charcoaled gold.
The filet fumes saunter into the blue sky. Birds swirl around my house, wondering if they can swoop down and steal this delightful cut of beef from my bar b que.
Six more minutes and I pull it off.
It is perfect, simmering, begging for teeth to take a bite and let it melt in the back of your throat like a wonderful sorbet cleansing the pallet.
“Well, here you go,” I say putting his piece on a plate.
“dig in.”
He puts the small piece in his mouth. I think he likes it.
I am wrong.
then I see the face.
The strained ligaments in his jaw, the distended eye lids, the jaundiced look of dissatisfaction.
You would think i just made him eat a piece of cactus.
“What? Don’t like it?”
I don’t get a response. He is contorting like Linda Blair in the midst of an exorcism.
One eye opens, the other eye shuts. His chewing is labored and in slow motion, as if his mouth is a marionette puppet and it has come undone.
He looks at me with that face.
I start laughing knowing that my culinary experiment has failed.
He lowers his face to the plate and lets the slightly chewed meat roll off his tongue.
even half chewed it still looks like delightful.
Starving African children would kill for this piece of rejected beef.
He quickly drinks his milk.
“What is all that red stuff. Is that the blood? It’s the blood, isn’t it?”
I feel like I am being interrogated by a member of PETA.
“It’s the juice son. It’s delicious.” I say, the president of the Caveman Club of America.
I shake my head and pull out the last ball park frank and throw it on the grill.
As the steam from the processed meat package of disgust begins to sizzle on the coals, I look for the birds.
They have left. The hyenas have gone back to the hill.
Nobody wants to eat a sack of rancid mouse parts called Ball Park.
YUK
After 2 minutes, I bring the little disgusting wiener into the house and throw it into a stale bun.
He smothers it with mustard and takes a huge bite.
He smiles and suddenly all is good with his life.
I cut into my filet that is winking at me like a 1000 dollar a night whore.
Eat me big boy, it beckons.
Yes mam.
I put the first bite into my mouth and feel the meat, so tender, so delectable, begin to melt, a dance into my esophagus.
It’s a choir of sunshine as it slides, deliciously down my throat.
I could have no teeth and chew this filet it is so tender so good.
If I had better sense I would swallow what’s in my mouth, and then put the rest of the steak on a silver platter outside as an offering to God. Perhaps trade this delicacy for the Powerball numbers.
But I am a glutton and I cannot get the 2nd piece into my mouth fast enough.
“How can you eat that?” he asks his lips filled with French’s Mustard.
“it’s all full of blood.”
“How can you not eat it?” I retort, dabbing at the corner of my lips as if I am the Grey Poupon man.
Next week?
who knows?
Venison? Squirrel? Octopus?
it doesn’t matter. he won’t eat it.
And that is crazy.™