Picky

A quick Ed Hamann story. As the family folklore goes (I can’t vouch for the accuracy, blogs were highly iffy in the 1950’s), dad and uncle Dick and my grandparents were driving across the county and my dad hadn’t eaten anything in days.  It seems he was a notoriously picky eater. 

Fearing for his health, Grandpa Al and Grandma Carol offered to get him anything he wanted to lunch.  You name it.  He asked for pancakes and got ‘em.  But then he refused to eat.  Which was when my dad got spanked.

I’m not saying I agree with my grandpa raising his hand to my father.  But I understand.

Elijah and Luca have become quite the picky eaters.  The list of things they’ll eat without a fight can be counted on two Chicken McNuggets.

No matter what I announce for dinner, the first thing out of Luca’s mouth is, “I hate that!”

Their stubbornness not to eat food is matched by my stubbornness to keep forcing them to eat stuff they hate.

My pal Patrick brought us over a lovely lasagna when I was off work. It was big enough to feed a horse, and had every kind of meat in the world besides horse, so I thought it would be great to feed to the boys.

“Guys!  I am gonna heat up some of this world famous Patrick lasagna for dinner!”

“I hate that,” Luca shouted.

“How do you know?  When’s the last time you even ate lasagna?”

“I hate it.  I tried it once and I hate it!”

“Okay.  If you can tell me two ingredients in lasagna.  Or even tell me what a lasagna looks like, you don’t have to eat it.”

Luca thought for a second.  “I hate it!”

So we all sat down to a nice dinner of lasagna.  Well, I did.  Luca and Eli didn’t eat any of it and we fed it to the garbage disposal. 

And then they starved  until the next morning when they acquired their daily calorie intake in the form of Froot Loops.