Twas Brillig

“I don’t want to LIVE anymore!!!” exclaimed my not-quite-four year old Bubba as he melted onto the floor in a pool of misery.

Where does he get this crazy dramatic streak?

Poor kid. His mother is SUCH a tyrant. See, I brought home spaghetti noodles last night and cheerfully told everyone that we would have spaghetti for lunch today. There was much rejoicing. Their dad doesn’t like spaghetti, so they don’t get such “treats” very often at dinner time.

(Some kids don’t get that spaghetti is a “treat” you know. But I never take such things for granted. My mother fed us raw almonds, tofu, and spinach all the time. Oh, what I would have done for a bowl of spaghetti!)

(My mother still eats that way, which is why, at 63, she has the body of an 18 year old…)

ANYWAY, just now Bubba decided that he didn’t want spaghetti. He wanted chicken nuggets. Oh, how he HAD to have chicken nuggets. And I, his wicked tyrannical mother, would not budge. “I told you all along that we were going to have SPAGHETTI and you’re gonna LIKE it!!!”

Which brings us back to the beginning of my post, where he melted into a pool of misery and exclaimed that he no longer wanted to live.

(On a side note, don’t you think it would be an interesting research study to find out how many people no longer wanted to live just because their lunch options weren’t what they had hoped for?)

So, of course, I had to show him and Fluffy all the joys of spaghetti, which started with the “uncooked-spaghetti-noodle-held-between-the-lips-and-used-as-a-sword” sword fight. And it worked. They loved the game. Forgotten was the need for chicken nuggets. NOW he had a reason to live.

And then they stabbed me with spaghetti noodles and I, like any good mother would, flailed around the kitchen in true thespian style and woefully denounced them a-la Mercutio with “you’ve made worm’s meat of me” and “a pox on BOTH your houses” and so on.

And somewhere it occurred to me that Bubba might, just might get his dramatic streak from me!

Nah.