Sister Wildcucumber will probably have a wild fit about this, but it’s the truth.
Let me explain. As a child, our family income never amounted to much. We ate lots of homemade hamburger patties for dinner. I’ve never gotten much of a useful answer from Mom, but she always seasoned them generously with garlic. Every time. Which meant three or even four times a week I was choking down a garlic burger to keep from getting punished. My Dad was pretty intolerant about some of the smallest things. He was the one who slapped me backwards out of my chair if I dared complain about Mom’s garlic burgers. Then again, I seem to recall Mom saying the equivalent of STFU, too.
Even when we were better off, Mom still offered them weekly. If anything, the garlic got even thicker. Smothering with ketchup just didn’t work any more. So as a teenager I often used my meager teen income to seek out burgers seasoned with just about anything except garlic.
Don’t get me wrong; garlic has its place. If I ate bread, I would still like garlic toast. It’s good with spaghetti and other Italian foods, but I consume no wheat at all, so I see very little of it. It has no business on burgers.
I suppose I could make a moral lesson about not screwing up your kids, but that’s far from the whole story. I’d rather not try to tell much more about the dysfunctions of my family in my childhood years, because some elements of my childhood were just dandy. I will tell you that I recall thinking I wouldn’t do that to my kids, despite doing plenty of other things wrong. I suppose it’s part of why I tend to take kids seriously when they say they like or don’t like things, even when I know I have to force them to eat better than they normally would without guidance. It also contributes to my willingness to see things from the other person’s point of view.
However, it’s more important to note how some of the smallest things can make such a huge difference. One of God’s greatest gifts to mankind seems to me like punishment, and I can’t break that association in my mind.
