Wry Living

Why We Are Fussy Eaters, Mummy

You’re always complaining we’re fussy eaters, mummy. You accuse us of being cussed, or say we’re just doing it to wind you up. If there’s someone else there, you trill “but he eats this at home!”, more shame to you. You cry into your Annabel Karmel book, stroking the mini fish pie page and moaning ‘Why? Why?” Well, let’s have a think about it, shall we?
Drinks: Type
If the barman serves you Chardonnay instead of Sauv, you chuck it in his face! If Costa has run out of decaf you flounce off in a huff. If we run out of Earl Grey you send up flares. You get riled when we won’t drink juice that you’ve blatantly watered down, yet I have seen you roast daddy for bringing you Foster’s not Stella. Who’s fussy now?
Drinks: Temperature
So, I don’t like drinking the juice at lunch that’s been sitting on the table since breakfast – you can clear up everything around it (although you usually don’t, do you?) but you can’t fool me. And OK, I admit, I do like to drive you a bit crazy by complaining my bedtime milk is too hot, and then – when you’ve stomped downstairs to splosh some more in, and all over the side to boot – that it’s too cold. It makes me feel like I have a bit of control, and it means I spend a little bit longer with you when you’re trying to put me to bed and go downstairs for your wine. Ah yes – wine. God forfend that you should have to drink prosecco that isn’t chilled enough. And you and your cronies are CONSTANTLY moaning about having to drink cold tea. So, you like to drink warm drinks in the day and cold drinks in the evening. I am the other way round. Can we call it quits?
New Stuff
If you stink up my pizza by sprinkling herbs on it, I feel justified in protesting. If it ain’t broke, why fix it? Yes, maybe it’s overkill to actually cry when I see something completely unfamiliar on my plate. But how often do you try a new food, mother? How many nights a week do you have a baked potato for dinner? And the other two, let me guess (cos of course, I’m tucked up in bed by this point, forcing down my cold, cold milk): pasta and omelette? Am I warm? Cos my milk sure isn’t.
Sweet Stuff
I will eat anything with sugar in it. Literally anything. Including those paper sachets you get at cafes. But you? You send out a distress call if you are down to your last bar of Green & Black’s. You base your supermarket choice on who stocks Freddo frogs. You won’t even eat iced buns any more, after there was a dead fly in the bag last time you bought some. Fussypants!
Hot Stuff
You say sausage, I say spicy. You say arrabiata, I say “ouchy!” You say piri piri houmous, I say “Ship, that’s hot!” (Ship is a real swear word, you told me). Yet you won’t order anything above a single chilli symbol from the curry house. Thresholds, mother, thresholds.
It’s for your own good
I’m being fussy for your own sake, mum. Give me pasta and pesto followed by a Fab every day until I’m 16, then I will suddenly blossom and start eating kale chips for breakfast. You’ll have a cheap and easy time and I’ll eat vitamin sweets in recompense. Until then, mummy, take the Chardonnay out of your own eye before you try to remove the fleck of oregano from mine.
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Picture credit: www.parentsforhealth.org

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