Thursday, August 16, 2007

Favorite Food

If you had to choose one food that you would find next to impossible to give up, what would you choose? Mine would be watermelon. I have always loved watermelon and am probably the only person on the face of the earth who can say they got into trouble in Sunday school because of watermelon. I was four or five years old so it was around 1955 and my class was learning about Easter and Lent. My Sunday school teacher who shall remain nameless (Miss Thompson) suggested that for Lent we give up our favorite food. Fine by me mainly because I was scared Miss Thompson was going to suggest roller skates and that wasn't happening. Lent or no Lent....I had just gotten those skates for Christmas and they were staying! HEY now, cut me some slack....I was five years old and not really into the spirit of Lent. Miss Thompson went around the room and we were to tell her what food item we had decided to give up while she wrote our names and choices in our "Lent book". There were some pretty tough decisions being made as it's not easy for a five year old to give up ice cream or candy or hamburgers for a WHOLE six weeks. Well, Miss Thompson got to me and when I told her watermelon was my choice she was very snippy and told me in no uncertain terms that Lent was a serious matter and she was giving me five minutes to think it over and give her a proper response. Well, I thought it over and at the end of the five minutes I came to the conclusion that Miss Thompson was a little nuts. Watermelon REALLY was my favorite food but if it wasn't good enough for her then I would go with my second favorite...corn on the cob. When I told her my second choice she rolled her eyes and said, "Well that is just FINE and you can tell your mother to expect a phone call from me this evening." Miss Thompson called just like she said she would and I don't think Miss Thompson really believed my mother when she tried to explain that five year olds don't understand crop cycles and that I had no clue there was no watermelon or corn on the cob to sacrifice in Indiana during the month of March. My mother hung up the phone, turned to me and said, "You are giving up candy." Geeesh, and you wonder why I'm not quite right.

1 comments:

Chris said...

I can relate. Except, us Catholic 's learned early on to just tell the nuns what they wanted to hear.