Why I am the way I am.
When I went home for dinner on Sunday (yes, I go home every Sunday night for dinner. Added bonuses: my mom gives me tons of food for the upcoming week, either prepared or raw, depending on what I want, and I can pilfer my house for anything else I need, like paper towels, contact lens solution, tennis shoes, etc [my house is like Costco sometimes], and I can do my laundry), I found my mother in the kitchen, meticulously going through an enormous frozen "mixed vegetable medley" bag, separating out the green beans from the corn, peas, and carrots.
"Why are you going that?" I asked.
"Your sister doesn't like green beans," she replied.
"How do you know that?"
"She didn't say anything, but she brought home several lunches uneaten." Yes, she makes a week's worth of lunches and dinners for my sister, who is in college, because my sister doesn't cook and we are a family who deplore the concept of meal plans. Apparently, my sister's lunches of late somehow incorporate this "mixed vegetable medly" which I suppose she doesn't eat.
"So how did you know it was the green beans?"
My mother shrugged.
"You mean, you would have gone through one-by-one and sorted out a different vegetable each time until you figured out which one she didn't like?"
And you know, while she didn't say it, the answer to that question was definitely a yes.
And then I was going to open my big fat mouth and say that my sister was just too picky for her own good, and that she should eat the green beans or at the very least, just eat around them, or else just suffer, when I remembered:
When I was three, my mom used to buy big enormous sweet grapes, but they had seeds. And thick skins. So she used to peel and deseed them before giving them to me.Sure, but you were only three and could have choked on the seeds, you argue. But you see, it didn't stop there.
All the way through junior high and high school, if my mom didn't peel my oranges for me when packing my lunch, I would just bring them home. When asked why I didn't eat my fruit, I told her that I didn't want to get my hands all messy and I didn't like getting orange rind stuck under my nails. So she would peel my oranges for me, and I would eat my fruit. Keep in mind that at that point, she used to make my lunch before leaving for work at 6:15AM.As those were only two examples of how I was egregiously spoiled, I shut up about my sister. Because in our family, we're not spoiled through the showering of material goods but rather through small gestures like this. My mom still asks me if I have any special requests for Sunday dinner, as though I only come home once in a blue moon instead of every week. Obviously, my mother is infinitely patient and puts up with a lot from us. (But I have to say, we're pretty good kids otherwise.)
It makes me shudder at the thought of the children I'll have some day. I mean, if they're anything like me... well, I'll just ship them off to their grandmother, who will definitely know how to deal with them better than I will.
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