'Do you want to try Marvin's potatoes?' asks my mom, but my nephew just shakes his head. He's content with his French fries, and wants no part of my mom's offer—of her husband's hash browns, it should be noted.
'But Marvin's are good,' explains my mom. 'See?' She reaches across the restaurant table and grabs a potato, swallowing and smiling. 'Yum, yum. You would like it.'
My nephew isn't interested. He eats French fries, with lots of ketchup, but won't touch the other potatoes, which sets up a continuous round robin of 'Try it, just try it.'
'No.'
'But it's real gooood.'
'No.'
I remember going through the same thing with my folks years ago, only I didn't refer to them by their first names. My nephew knows no other names for them, as they decided Gita and Marvin sounded a lot better than Grandma and Grandpa.
With me, it was fish. My mom and my aunt made it their life's mission to get me to eat fish. A big push was made every year at my aunt and uncle's summer home in Wisconsin. My uncle would light up his massive grill, and hoist a humungous cast-iron fry pan atop. There, he would fry up the day's catch. Since the idea of fishing already nauseated me, it's no wonder I refused to try it.
'But it's goooood.'
'No.'
'It tastes like popcorn.'
'Then I'll eat popcorn.'
'It doesn't even taste like fish.'
That's when I would go into a discussion of how, if it doesn't taste like fish, and that was a good thing, then why would anyone want to eat fish in the first place? Yes, I was several annoying degrees beyond precocious, but, at least, the conversation would veer off of fish for a day or two.
When my cousin married a Beverly Hills dentist, my aunt marveled that he also disliked seafood. 'He won't eat a bite. Won't even put it in his mouth.'
I think we were supposed to bond over that amazing tidbit, but the first meeting of the We Eat No Seafood Club has yet to materialize.
When I was a teenager, I would come out of my bedroom only for meals. Sulky and grumpy, and just wanting to get back upstairs and masturbate again, I would stare down at my plate, while my mom explained that from now on the skin was going to be removed from the chicken she prepared. Fine. I learned to eat the chicken without the skin, and even if I had hated it, I wouldn't have said anything anyway, since I didn't speak at dinner for several miserable years.
Imagine my surprise then, when, a few years back, my mom began cooking chicken with the skin still on. 'It's moister that way,' she said. 'Just pull the skin off.'
Why, I want to know, is this always the way? My nephew with the alternate potatoes, me with the re-skinned chicken. Why do moms want us to eat the new, the different, the other? She convinced me skin on chicken is a big no-no. I bought into the hype, and then the old switcheroo.
If I started chugging iced gasoline at lunch, she'd tell me to try iced brake fluid instead. Maybe it would be heartier or more nutritious or taste better, or maybe, just maybe, it's because I would be drinking the gasoline, and not the brake fluid. A week later, after I'd switched, then it would be back to, 'Try the nice gasoline. It's so cool and refreshing. I like it with a lemon wedge.'
Moms are programmed to feed their kids, and to get them to eat a wide variety of foods. My mom's instincts have simply been turned up a notch. Or two. She's turned up to 11 on the amp, and I'm trying to follow through.
I eat the occasional seafood item, and I try new things. I listen to the benefits of eating a food a certain way, even though I know I have no intention of following through at a later date.
It's the least I can do, after the setbacks my mom has faced with my nephew, who appears to be developing an iron will. He doesn't know who he's up against.
