Back in my youthful days, I was a rather picky eater. Sometimes I
wouldn't want to eat whatever my mother, bless her heart, put upon
the dinner table for us. One day, I asked her for a PB&J
sandwich instead of, who knows what it was, probably a quiche, so
my dear mum made me a nice sandwich: two slices of whole wheat, one
with crunchy store-brand peanut butter, one with seedless strawberry
jelly. (I didn't like preserves back then, either.)
Turns out
that I wasn't interested in the sandwich, either. But waste not, want
not, as we learned in the Great Depression. So, I had to sit at that
darned table till I finished my dinner. "No," I decided, "I'd had
enough to eat," all one bite of it. I took my plate, sandwich and all,
into the kitchen and put it in the sink with the other dirty dishes
to be washed.
My father said "No! Finish your sandwich!" He
always did the dishes; it was relaxing for him and a convenient excuse not to start the work he had
brought home earlier. My parents made me sit back down at the table
and eat that sandwich -- that icky, soggy sandwich, the bread falling
apart, the plate tasting faintly of soap.
For years after that,
I couldn't eat a PB&J sandwich. Sure, two
pieces of whole wheat, jelly spread, and a spoonful of delicious
hydrogenated peanut butter? A delicious lunch -- so long as they didn't
mix till my stomach!