First Food: A Storybook

Before I jump in, thank you for all your suggestions and kind words about my last post. I’m in a much better frame of mind today. As I said, I know there will be good days and bad days. I’m trying not to get thrown for quite so big a loop when the bad ones come along.

Anyway. This is an old story from the depths of the Facebook vault. I can’t remember what brought it to mind, but it was so much fun at the time (pre-blog) that I thought I’d pull it out again. It still makes me laugh, and I hope you get a chuckle too.

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Once upon a time, there was a little boy who cried during supper every night. He was little, but he wanted to eat supper with everyone else in his family. His parents would not share their food with him, though. They ate and told his brother to sit down and ignored the little boy. Sometimes (and this was the worst indignity of all) his papa carried him back to his crib and laid him down and said, “You are driving your mama crazy. Shhhh.”

The little boy privately thought that his mama was crazy whether he cried or not, but he kept that to himself.

But he still wanted to eat supper with everyone else.

“PICTURE!! I WANNA PICTURE!!!” hollered the little boy’s big brother. He hollered a lot. Sometimes the little boy’s mama hollered, “STOP HOLLERING!”

And the little boy thought deep thoughts about irony, but still he kept his own counsel.

And he still wanted to eat supper with everyone else.

The day came when the little boy was placed not in his swing, where he was supposed to look at the same three animals that had been floating over his head for months, and not in his bouncy, where he was supposed to watch everyone else eating and pretend not to care, but in a high chair, and pulled right up to the table.

And his papa held up a spoon with some sort of odd paste on it to his mouth, and the little boy wondered where the tater tot casserole was when you really needed it. But this was progress, and he decided not to quibble about the details.

And he ate of it, and it was good.

Or not.

But the little boy (he was very pragmatic for his age) decided to make the best of things and ate up every little bit of the cereal his parents had finally decided to give him.

And again his big brother asked to have his picture taken, too, but this time he remembered to say please and not to holler.

And the little boy was happy.

(Written December 2010)