Thank God for the British.
Worried that you might be drinking too much? Well, you can always take comfort in the fact that you’re no Amy Winehouse. The same goes for swearing, and Chef Gordon Ramsay. And let’s not even get started on the whole teeth thing.
Lately, however, the British have come through for me yet again, this time on the subject of childhood nutrition. It seems that there was a fifteen year old boy somewhere in Britain who had gotten to be that age while living on a steady diet of Pop Tarts, jam sandwiches, and…well, apparently, that was it.
Doctors, hoping to perform some kind of an intervention, gave this boy a complete nutritional work-up, and came to the conclusion that he was completely, utterly, 100%…fine. (Except for a slight iron deficiency, which seems to suggest to me that he should be eating more Pop Tarts.)
Just like with Amy Winehouse and Gordon Ramsay before him, hearing about this unnamed British boy (or rather his parents) gave me one of those temporary bursts of smugness that are so rare in my typical parenting day. Finally, I thought to myself, a child I can look at and say, “Well, at least my kids aren’t that bad.”
Not that they aren’t close. But somehow, allowing a child to subsist on a diet of nearly nothing but ramen noodles (as Clyde does), or cheese crisps (as Clementine does) just doesn’t seem nearly as irresponsible as allowing a child to eat hundreds of Pop Tarts, if only because Pop Tarts seem sort of trashy. (We can thank Toaster Strudels–the epitome of class–for that).
Still, on some level I realize that it is only luck on my part, and not good parenting, that has made Clyde fixate on noodles and not Pop Tarts, and that we are only one grocery store aisle (and about eight years) away from being the subject of our own nutritional intervention.
How did this happen? I know that there are lots of parents out there (henceforth referred to as type “G” parents–“G” for “good”)who manage to get their kids to eat nutritionally balanced meals every day. Their kids eat a variety of foods–they eat fruits, they eat vegetables–they even, sometimes, eat sushi, for cryin’ out loud.
These children, not surprisingly, are usually referred to as “good eaters,” as in when the pediatrician asks you about your child’s diet and prefaces the question with “Is she a good eater?” (I never quite know how to respond to this, mostly because I am always reminded me of the scene in Airplane! when Robert Hay’s character announces “I have a drinking problem,” right before he pours a glass of water all over himself; or the Steven Wright joke where somebody asks him, “Did you sleep well?” and he replies, “No: I made a few mistakes.”)
Part of the problem, I guess, is that you never hear the term “good eater” applied to adults, even though there are plenty of adults out there who are just as picky as the most particular child. If you don’t believe me, try getting a group of more than four adults to agree on which restaurant they’re going to eat at that night–bonus points if you throw in the words “Ethiopian food” and “father-in-law.”
Still, there’s a difference between not wanting to eat food you can’t pronounce (although who can pronounce the ingredients listed on a box of Pop Tarts?) and not wanting to eat something that just came from a different shelf on the refrigerator.
I mean, even Amy Winehouse drinks more than one kind of alcohol.
Which means that, I guess on some things, the British still have me–and my kids–beat.