Every morning and evening, Lucy takes a little gummi vitamin.
This is a major highlight of her day.
They come in three flavors, and are shaped like little bears.
Nothing wrong with that.
Except: one morning, many months ago, Dyami pretending the vitamin protested as Lucy lifted it to her mouth: "Don't eat me!!!" (In a shrill gummi bear voice).
Of course, this made the already-exciting ritual even more exciting.
So then we had to say, "Don't eat me" every time she ate the darn thing.
Again, we're still on the border of propriety here.
Then Lucy realized that if the gummi bear could say one thing, it could say others. Which led to the macabre conversations we've been having every morning and night:
"Hi, Bear Vitamin, what your name?"
"Orangy (or Bartholemew or Chrissy or whatever. We have come up with a lot of names. Once we name them...kaput.)"
"Hi! Nice meet you." Pause.
"So why did you get me out of that jar?"
"Cause I going eat you. See my sharp teeth?" (Big smile, very sharp teeth.)
"Oh no! Don't eat me!"
Etc, etc.
I didn't notice how awful this really was until a) my parents heard the exchange and b) the babysitters heard the exchange.
Then I was like, what are we teaching our child?
However, I am hard-pressed to know how exactly to end the massacre of the innocents at mealtime. Perhaps we bundle it together with the conversation about how that "chicken" we eat really is chicken.
Except we don't usually taunt the chicken before putting it on the grill.
2 comments:
I admittedly taunted my food as a child. I can remember teasing my gummi bears in a similar manner before torturing them to death. I didn't just eat them. I ate their legs or arms first and worked my way up to their head. Or sometimes decapitated them before eating them. My broccoli became trees that I had to chop down (I pretended the trees would scream in pain as I did that)before I could eat them. My spaghetti became wiggly worms that were going to be teased before I ate them too. I don't remember how long the phase lasted, but I eventually did stop torturing my food.
Oh--I did the tree thing too. What kind of weird developmental thing is that, anyway?
Post a Comment