Good Mother

My wife likes being a good mother. And she's very good. Just one of the things that makes her good is that she cares about what her kids eat.

Our 13 year-old eats pizza and french fries every day. He does this for several reasons. One: it's easy to plan for, as that's what's served in the school cafeteria every day. Two: he doesn't have to think about it. Three: he doesn't have to pay for it. Four: he likes it.

It used to drive my wife nuts that he would eat this crap every day at lunch. She would really get concerned for his health, saying that eating the same thing everyday was going to give him some disease. And then I didn't help her at all when I told her that one of my students came down with shingles because he refused to eat anything but Mountain Dew and Nerds. Or maybe it was Skittles. Point being: he came down with shingles and it hurt him. And my wife used that to fuel her ever-growing frustrated concern.

I tried to tell her that I ate 2 biscuits and a cheeseburger everyday for lunch in high school. She responded with, "Well I'm not *your* mother," or something like that, and continued to worry. I tried to tell her that we have control over the things we have control over and we don't have control over everything else. We simply cannot make him eat "the right food" when he's away from us. Hell, we can't *make* him eat the right food when he's around us. But when he's at school, he can choose to eat the pizza and french fries every day and there's nothing we can do about it.

My wife and I finally found something that suited all of us: if our 13 year-old chooses to eat pizza and french fries every day at lunch, that's fine. And we will provide a healthy vegetable of our choosing for him to eat at dinner. He's agreed to that. My wife has agreed to that. It makes me happy to see them agreeing to things, especially when they're good for everybody concerned.

I write about this pizza and french fry thing today not because it's weighing on my mind or because there's something wrong with the fact that our educational institutions are teaching our children that it's okay to eat pizza and french fries every day, but because I just realized that every day at my job we all know it's lunch time when we hear the announcement over the PA system, "Pizza is now being served in the break room." This announcement happens every day. This lunch is served every day. And I work for the state.