I was talking to a friend about our childhood eating habits. She to this day will not drink milk nor eat chicken, because she has always despised the way they taste. She said that as a kid, her mom would make chicken and rice on the same day each week, and my friend ate rice and her brother ate chicken, so when Mom left the table, they’d switch plates and eat what the other won’t. Then her brother moved out and my friend would just sit and stare at the glass of milk on her table, and stare at the chicken, until one day her mom finally got the picture. I asked why she couldn’t have simply told her mom that she didn’t want the stuff. She said that in her household they couldn’t be picky and had to eat whatever was in front of them. When her brother left, she finally told her mom that she had never eaten the chicken.

I told her that in my house my dad always conned me into eating something I didn’t like by telling me some crazy story about how it’s magic or I’m creating a park in my stomach and the broccoli is the trees and the people would be sad if my park had no trees for them to sit under, the soup is the lake and I need to eat some duck to swim in the lake, and of course I need more rice so that the people can use it like bread to feed the ducks, I can’t very well let the poor duckies starve, etc.. (I blame my wild imagination and constant psychological guilt on my parents.)

My no-nonsense friend said, “That would never work at our house.”