When Your Own Kids Won’t Eat With You, Find Someone Else’s

I keep reading about normal, healthy families eating together.  I’d feel guilty, but I live with the General and the Vegan.  Try eating with these two.  One does a College-level biology dissection on everything on his plate.  The other talks so loud the neighbors cover their ears while, at the same time, chewing big bites with her mouth open.  This is why we find people with normal, healthy families and eat with their kids instead.

Charlie and I taught Tae Kwon Do through the local Parks and Rec for many years.  Many normal, healthy families with normal, healthy kids paid us to yell at their kids every Tuesday, Thursday and sometimes Saturday.  Some of these people don’t run the other direction when we cross paths. 

One of our students, Matt, who stayed with us long enough to get his black belt, bumped into us at church.  Granted, it was dark and we were off in a corner, but he still introduced us to his girlfriend, Virginia, without rolling his eyes or sneering.  We decided if he wasn’t embarrassed to hug us, which he did, we’d go the next step: we’d take them out to sushi.

The Vegan and the General used to love sushi.  Like normal, healthy people, they got tired of it eventually.  They’d rather eat frosted flakes than eat pretty vegetables and fish wrapped in white rice and seaweed.  They’d rather put a pop tart in the toaster than put ginger and wasabi on a spider roll. 

We can’t even bribe the Vegan with the promise of a new pair of skater shoes.  We don’t bribe the General; we don’t think they want her back.  The last time, she looked at the train/conveyor belt full of little plates of fish and rice and yelled, “When’s the American food coming around?  Where’re the hamburgers?”

Matt and Virginia arrived a few minutes late.  We assumed it’s because they are students.  Students usually have better things to do than eat sushi with old people who once made them put their bodies in compromising positions and then beat on them mercilessly.  We were happy they showed up at all.  It’s more than we get from our own kids.

“Great directions, Magellen.”

“I told you I don’t know street names,” I said.  “It’s in Beaverton, behind Hooters.  You’re a guy; isn’t that enough?”

“We got directions from someone at Radio Shack,” Matt says, “in Portland.”

“Oops.”

“I still owe you for spraying me,” Matt says to Charlie.  “I’m the only person on this planet who’s been sprayed with Lysol, in my mouth, in the middle of a belt test.”

“I forgot I did that.”

“I haven’t, don’t worry.”

“I was spraying equipment,” Charlie says.  “You looked too serious.”

“It was a belt test.”

I ask the question every normal, healthy parent asks of their kids, “How’s school?”

“I think I’m majoring in video games.  I play more than anyone I know, and I go to U of O.”

“You could be drinking,” Charlie says.  “That’s what people did before video games.”

“I’m too addicted to solitaire to expand to video games.”

Virginia high-five’s me.  “Me, too!” she says.

I like this girl.

Matt’s been to Japan, so he knows the proper names for things.  He eats with his mouth closed and without us resorting to bribes.  He’s eating things we’ve only watched other people eat.  Charlie can’t get him to try sea urchin, though.  Not even some of our raised-in-Japan friends will eat sea urchin.

“These octopus dumplings are good,” Matt says, getting another plateful.

There’s something my kids will never say.

“They’re better than the ones I had in Japan.”  He gets a plate for Virginia.  “Try them.”

She’s cute and happy and she obliges.  “I think I ate a sucker,” she says.  “Are you supposed to?”

“It’s octopus.”

“Someone was asking about you recently,” I said.  “There were so many Matt’s in Tae Kwon Do so I asked him, ‘Which Matt?’  He said, ‘The Matt with the Hobbitt feet.’  Everyone instantly knew who you were.”

The General called and was talking so fast I couldn’t understand her.  I think she was asking permission for something but I was on a wasabi high.  I said ‘yes’ a few times and she hung up.  We said goodbye to the normal, healthy kids and returned home.

The Vegan, as usual is on the skater chat rooms.  I notice many empty water bottles lined up next to his keyboard.  The General drinks water.  He, being Vegan, eats ramen and drinks Squirt.  I figure the General hasn’t cleaned up for a while.

“Look!”

“What?” Charlie says.  I’m too busy counting water bottles to respond.  There are eighteen.

“I drank all those.”

“Don’t you have to take a leak?”

“I just did!”

He seemed a bit too proud of the way he spent his evening.  Before I could try to say something motherly, the General arrived home.

“I just went to Hooters,” she says.  “It was awesome.  None of my friends were allowed to go.  I said, ‘I called my Mom and she said yes.  I don’t think she heard me right.’”

“You talk too fast.”

“You’ve been threatening to go to Hooters ever since it opened,” Charlie said.  “I didn’t believe you’d actually go.  What’s a bunch of sixteen year-old girls doing at Hooters?”

“We got t-shirts.  We saw lots of crusty old men degrading women.  They degrade women so bad it was almost funny to watch.  They couldn’t move their eyes up from chest level.”

“Why do you think it’s called ‘Hooters?’”

She looks at the Vegan and starts shouting, “Dylan’s stoned!  Dylan’s stoned!”

“He doesn’t have any money for dope,” I say.  That’s the most motherly thing I can think of saying.

“Look,” she says, grabbing him by the collar.  “Look at him, he’s stoned.”

He’s laughing so hard, he can’t talk.  This does nothing to convince us she’s wrong.

“See?”

“I, uh, heh heh, uh,” the Vegan says.

“Listen to him.  Look at his eyes.

“Heh heh, uh, heh heh heh.”

“He is stoned,” Charlie said.

“He’s laughing like he’s stoned,” I say, “but he’s not eating oreos.”

“Oreos,” he says.  “That sounds good.  Do we have any oreos?”

“I could eat oreos,” Charlie says.

“Oreos?” the General says.  “Do we have oreos?”

When they say you should eat together to be a normal, healthy family, do oreos count?

A little help? [] 2:50:24 PM