[bigdumbswede]

I had a couple of my kids turn out to be fussy eaters. That's what my wife called it anyhow.

"Oh, Honey, he's just a fussy eater."
That was her euphemism for a kid that I preferred to call a "f---ing pain in the ass."

My wife would slave away over the stove, bring out a beautifully prepared meal, set it down in front of the offspring, wiping away wisps of hair from her face, exhausted from hours of cooking and picking up toys.

"I don't like it. I don't want that."
"Why?" I'd ask. I raise an eyebrow at the offending kid, knife in hand, ready to filet the child.
"I just don't like it. I KNOW I don't like it. And I know if ate it, I'm going to like it even less."
"Well, I like it." I'm trying to be diplomatic. What I want to say is,"eat it or wear it." I usually got to that point later in the meal.

My wife would try to corner them with logic. Logic never worked on the 2-13 yr. old age group in my house. Their brains never worked properly until the eighth grade usually. No reasoning with them until then.
"Well,how do you know you don't like it, if you've never tried it?"
"I just know I won't like it." By now the kid is doing the pre-adolescent slump in the chair, barely draped on it, only part of his ass and head contacting the chairseat and back.

"How do you know you don't like it, eh? It came to you in a dream or something?" I ask.
The fussy eater rolls their eyes at me now.

Some foods they wouldn't eat because they didn't like the sound of the food's name. Guacamole. Ewwww, yuck, I'm not eating it. It's green. One of the kids wouldn't eat anything green. A vegetable never passed his lips until he was 19 or 20. Might as well get the colonoscope out now, he's probably heading for advanced colo-rectal cancer from no anti-oxidants the first two decades of his life.

"Not squash. Gross." Kids won't eat anything that sounds like you squashed it out of something else. Yeah? Well, how about a nice tongue sandwich, kid, what if we have that for dinner tomorrow night? Or tripe? Tongues and stomachs of cattle, sound good, eh? You'll be begging for a casserole with a few stray green vegetables buried in with the noodles, boy. Garbanzo beans? Forget it, they won't touch anything that looks like a bean or has a funny name like garbanzo.

Some of our kids wouldn't eat anything unless it was clearly recognizable. Give em something they recognize, Honey. Okay, bring him a carrot."


There are a few things that I won't eat. Okra. It gets slimy. Lobsters and crabs don't look so hot to me . Anything with big pinchers that crawls sideways doesn't make me too hungry.

I can't eat raw oysters because they look like snot. And I know that they're loaded with cholesterol and a bunch of nasty bacterial species that might give me a months' long case of dysentery.

The good thing was that my wife always made wonderful desserts. At the end of the meal that the children considered inedible, then came the creme brulee, or peach cobbler, or apple pie, or homemade ice cream, cherry crisp bars, or whatever delicious, appealing treat she concocted.

Then the fussy eater in question would be ready to eat.

Ha ha, poetic justice.

I'd clear my throat."Sorry, son, if you're not hungry for Hungarian goulash or broccoli casserole, you're definitely not hungry for brownies and ice cream." God, God, God, forgive me for sounding like my mother. She used to say that same crap to me when I was a little kid. Flashback to Christmas, 1967:

"Just eat a little lutefisk, Sven."
"Not me. You eat it."
"Just try a little bit."
"Eating a little bit of that is like throwing up a little bit, Mom."

Then my wife would bring out a pan of double chocolate brownies and some Breyer's real vanilla bean ice cream. I'd sit and eat my brownie in front of the fussy eater. The fussy eater begins to wail loudly, great crying and knashing of teeth. Then fussy eater would be sitting under the dining room table, having undraped himself from the chair, oozing off it onto the tile. Blubbering pitifully, then agonized sobs.

Then, tenderhearted soul that I am, I'd end up under the table with my brownie and ice cream, seated on the floor with the fussy eater, spooning it into him. I can't take it when kids or women cry. Jesus.