It's better out of a glass.

I don't have kids, but I have friends that do and my brother does, and the stories they tell about their kids really crack me up. It's easy to forget what life is like when everything is still new. Remember telling some joke you found *hilarious* to your mom, and she just sort of smiled, and you're like, "What's wrong with her? That was FUNNY!" Then you find out years later that the joke has been around for like 50 years? And don't even get me started about music and covers. I actually thought Shaun Cassidy was the first to sing "Da Do Ron Ron Ron."

Well, a friend of mine at work has a 10 year-old son, and said 10-year-old (TYO) had a "first" the other night. He was eating some kind of late-night snack that involved food on a plate and milk. He's eating his food, and it's all good. Then he takes a gulp of milk - only before the milk has gone down his throat, he sneezes. BAM! Milk through the nose and all over his food (I'm laughing and falling over on my desk at this point when the co-worker tells me the story).



It gets better. So stunned is TYO at this turn of events, that he begins to cry. My co-worker, being a big, burly, manly man kinda guy says sympathetically, "Why are you crying?" TYO replies with distress, "It's all over my food!" Now, I'M thinking at this point that perhaps he means snot, and I can see where that might shut-down one's appetite, though I can't see that it would bring me to tears. But co-worker was pretty sure it was just the presence of milk on TYO's food that caused the meltdown - that and a panicky fear about liquids launching themselves through his nasal cavities. So, co-worker tells him, again in the most sympathetic of tones, "It'll all be mixed in your stomach. Just eat it." (I may not have that part verbatim, but that was the gist.) My co-worker ain't raisin' no girly man! I said he should've told TYO that in a few years, he'll be doing that on purpose.

Aside from making me laugh until my eyes watered, this story brought up a discussion about food mixing. Seems TYO is non-mixer when it comes to his food. I, too, am a non-mixer. I'm actually an uber-non-mixer. Not only do I not mix my food before eating it, but I don't mix as I eat - meaning that I finish all of one thing before I move on to the next. I eat all my mac-n-cheese before I eat any corn, then all the corn before I eat my fish, etc. It's not an OCD thing. I don't care if my food touches or anything. But I want to enjoy fully the taste of Thing One, then I'm done and ready to move onto the flavor extravaganza that is Thing Two. And I always try to end with a dish I think or know will be tasty - wanna walk away from the table with a good taste in my mouth.

I never thought it out. The method just came naturally. (Does it suprise anyone that I'm an unusually organized person?) I've always eaten that way. My mom knew this. However, for some reason only other men would understand, my father didn't absorb this about me until well into my adulthood - like sometime in the last 10 years. After eating meals with me for decades, he finally notices one night and points it out. I look at him, then look at my mom, who looks as puzzled as I do, and I say, "I've always eaten this way." "You have?" my dad says, suprised. "Yeah!" my mom says, incredulously.

But that's my dad. He's an easygoing guy who doesn't worry about the little things. He knew enough to always notice when my mom got her hair done, though, and that put him ahead of most men!