In Which I Chastise Ungrateful Grown Children

Today, I must confess, I'm mad at Sue. And not just because she's funnier than me. I'm over that. Really. But, geez, Sue, you're a mom, right? And yet, you're inviting all your readers to make fun of the food their mothers fed them? Maybe you haven't been a mother long enough. Maybe you still entertain the notion that as long as you make healthy, fun meals, your kids will not have any complaints about how you feed them. Right? Am I right? After all, if a kid's unhappy, it's got to be his mother's fault.
Ha, ha, ha, ha! Oh, I slay me.

Well, let me tell you, Sue, just wait. Yeah, that's right...just you wait. There will come a day when you realize that no matter what you feed those darling children, someone will whine and complain. There will come a day when, every single time you put a plate of food in front of one of your children, your stomach will clench up in a knot of anticipatory dread; because you know that within 3.4 seconds, someone is going to be voicing their unhappiness with the menu du jour.

You see, Sue, it's not us (the moms); it's the kids. You can make everyone's favorite breakfast, and someone will be sitting there crying because she didn't get her favorite spoon. You can get them the junkiest cereals known to man, all those cereals both you and I pined for as kids; and they'll complain because it isn't the boring healthy cereals we hated. Do you know why your mom handed you the bag of brown sugar with your Wheaties? Because she wanted y'all to just shut up and eat. That's right. And if giving you early-onset diabetes was the only way she could get you to ingest some fiber, then that's what she was going to do.

And those peanut-butter snacks she made for you? Those sounded pretty good to me! Hey, peanut butter has protein in it, so double points for her! In fact, tell her to send me the recipe, okay?

Seeing as how your mother had nine children, I'm not surprised she locked the refrigerator. Especially since one of those kids (not naming names here, or anything) had a propensity to eat raw hot dogs...I mean, what else could she do? And I'm sure locking the fridge cut down on the between-meals mess in the kitchen. This idea is sounding better and better to me.

As an aside, that raw hot dog incident hit uncomfortably close to home for me. Back when Rachel was going through her toilet-stuffing, stuffed-animal-decapitating phase, Theo went into her room one day and said, "It smells like hot dogs in here."

And I said, "No, it doesn't. Don't be ridiculous. I've had my eye on that child all day." Because I was trafficking pretty heavily in denial at that particular stage of our lives.

But he insisted, "It smells like hot dogs in here." After a brief search, he discovered the half-eaten pack of frankfurters in her desk drawer. But she wasn't the type to just cram a few raw hot dogs in her mouth in a hurry - no sirree! We weren't dealing with just any amateur food thief here. The remaining hot dogs were ensconced on a pretty plastic plate, with a dollop of mustard on the side. With them in the drawer were a knife and a fork and a cloth napkin.

Say what you like, that kid has style.

So I say, if locking the fridge works for you, all you moms out there, then go for it. And if your grown kids later try to accuse you of traumatizing them and giving them bad eating habits, just laugh that sort of hollow laugh all we older moms develop and ignore the ungrateful wretches. Because we all know who traumatized whom.

And, Sue, go apologize to your mother. I don't blame her one bit for waking you up singing "Good Morning To You" when you were a teen. Not one bit.