As I mentioned last weekend, my daughter has a thing for hamburgers. For her next older brother up, it's pizza but, for her, it's hamburgers. And let me just say, it's a lot easier to find decent burgers in the wild than it is to find decent pizza. Not that there's a lot of decent burgers, but there is much more upward variation. And because it's my daughter who plays softball, we've tried a lot of burger joints, most of which are unrememberable. Just to clarify, we basically never stop at chain joints for burgers. The last chain joint we went to was Burger King (for reasons I can't remember), and that was... that was... hmm... more than three years ago. Maybe more than four years ago. It reminded me why we don't go to there.
Having said that, let me further clarify by saying that I don't consider Five Guys a chain joint. Probably, it is, but in my head it's not. Still, it's been almost a year since we went to Five Guys, and that was because my wife was out of town and the kids wanted to go there. Anyway...
So Five Guys...
We like Five Guys. I mean, if you want a burger on the cheaper side that is still pretty good, Five Guys is the place to go. One thing about burgers is that no good burger is not messy, and Five Guys has nailed the messy part of burger making. You'll have "sandwich hands" for days after eating at Five Guys. Plus, their fries are good. Really good, actually, in comparison to other burger places. Unfortunately, you're getting fries or you're getting their other kind of fries and, for an onion ring guy, that's a downside no matter how good the fries actually are.
In-and-Out...
Don't believe the hype. Okay, well, actually, if your experience with burgers doesn't extend beyond the big three (McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's), you can probably believe the hype. From that standpoint, I can understand why non-Californians get so worked up over In-and-Out (even John Scalzi!). When I first moved here 20 years ago -- 20 years ago! -- and my experience with burgers mostly didn't extend past the burger chains, I thought In-and-Out was great. I was blown away by it the first time I had it, in fact. But that was 20 years ago, and they haven't changed any. They have the worst fries of any burger place I've ever been, and their menu, also, is pretty limited. So, sure, they're probably better (maybe) than BK or McDonald's, but they don't stand up to Five Guys. Oh, and I'd probably go to In-and-Out over ever going to Habit again, so there's that, too, I guess.
Barney's...
Barney's is probably the best burger I've had that was made outside of my own kitchen (other than that one I had in D.C. when I was 15, but I have no way to legitimately grade that against any other burger ever, because that one has achieved Legendary status in my brain (I have a post where I talk about that somewhere, but I'm not going to pull the link up right now (too busy)))). Barney's is a place we stopped on the way back from a softball tournament many years ago, and my daughter immediately fell in love with them. According to her, they are the pinnacle of burger making. I suppose mine come close, or maybe she's just being nice. Who knows? Unfortunately, we don't have one close enough to us to make it a place we can just decide to go to on short notice. Going to Barney's is an event or, actually, gets rolled into some other event.
Superburger...
As far as burger places go, burger places we can just decide to go to if we decide we want burgers (because making burgers at home is a multi-day process, so we have to plan to make burgers at home ahead of time, days ahead of time), Superburger is the best place around. Period. I actually think their burgers are comparable to Barney's, but you'll never get my daughter to agree with that. However, they don't have good fries. They do have onion rings which are pretty tolerable, and they also make yam fries. They don't have anything close to the menu offerings that Barney's has, though, so Barney's has the edge, overall, as a place to go eat. Superburger does make some awesome shakes and, if shakes were a thing I partook of, that would definitely be my choice of places to go. Look, these shakes are better than any shake I've ever had from any ice cream place, which is kind of like if the best burger you could get came from KFC or Taco Bell.
Superburger does have one pretty huge drawback at this point: the cost. [And I'm looking at their menu online, right now, and I'm pretty sure those prices are not accurate to the last time we went there.] When we first started going there, I would say their prices were pretty reasonable, but, now, taking the whole family to Superburger is much more expensive than a family night out at the movies. In other words, I think we went to Superburger, like, twice in all of 2018. Not that we get food out all that often, anyway, but Superburger is not a part of the normal conversation of places to go if we are going to get food out. It just costs too much. It's become a "special occasion" place, which is unfortunate.
There are some other burger places in the area that we've tried that aren't worth mentioning, so I'll go ahead and mention them as places to never ever go, the first of which I'm seeing has actually gone out of business:
Bibi's Burger Bar: Very expensive but with fast food level food. I'm not surprised they had to close their doors.
Phyllis' Giant Burgers: Frozen burger patties at their finest. Seriously, these are the kind of burgers you can make at home by buying frozen patties at the grocery store and picking up some tasteless white bread buns.
Ozzie's Grill: The only reason they stay open is that they are supported by the middle school and high school that they're halfway in between. Comparable to Phyllis' above.
It's possible that there are some restaurants that have better burgers than Superburger and Barney's, but I haven't had them and, when you think of getting a burger, you think of going to a burger place. Of course, when you think of getting a shake, you'd probably think of going to an ice cream shop, but I think of a burger joint.
So there's your burger rundown to go along with last week's review of Habit Burger.
Showing posts with label McDonald's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label McDonald's. Show all posts
Saturday, January 12, 2019
Saturday, January 5, 2019
A Bad Habit (a food review)
Doing food reviews is not a thing I've spent a lot of time doing, for no other reason than that I haven't spent a lot of time doing it. Any time I've had an urge to review a restaurant, I've always fallen back on "That's not a thing I do." I guess that's changing.
Mostly, I've had the urge to do reviews on places that I've enjoyed. Actually, that's completely true... until today, but I'll work my way back through the restaurants I think are really worthy of being visited.
However, today, I'm going to warn you away from a place, and I'm starting here because this is a chain place, whereas most of the places I'll be talking about are local spots. Which may not be the most helpful for most of you out there, but we don't (1) eat out all that much and (2), when we do, we don't visit many chain establishments.
But we went to Habit Burger, which is supposed to be a big deal; I was sorely disappointed.
See, my daughter is a bit of a burger fan, a thing that is somewhat related to softball and going to tournaments and getting her burgers on the road. It's only natural that she wanted to try Habit Burger when it moved into our area. As it happened, New Year's Day turned out to be a great time to do that because we'd been off doing other things, and I wasn't going to be able to cook dinner in any kind of reasonable time frame. Since we'd just been talking about Habit, like, the day before, I decided it would be a good time to give them a try.
Obvious disappointment #1:
They messed up the order. Despite the fact that the guy taking the order read the order back to me correctly and despite the fact that the girl who gave me our order when it was ready read off the order correctly, when we got home with the food, the order was not correct.
Less obvious disappointment #1:
Nothing was labeled, so I had to open every fucking burger wrapper to figure out who was supposed to get what, which is how I discovered the above disappointment because pickles had been left off of all of the burgers rather than off of just one of them.
Obvious disappointment #2:
The food was soggy. All of it. We don't live very far from where Habit Burger is located and ate as soon as we got home and, yet, all of the food was soggy when I took it out of the bag. If this is going to be a problem with your food, you should warn customers, like the "microwave not recommended" warnings on some frozen foods. Soggy burgers are just not pleasant. Neither are soggy onion rings.
Less obvious disappointment #2:
The onion rings and tempura green beans weren't quite cooked all the way. Both had a doughy flavor which is common when the dough doesn't cook through. Not that the onion rings would have been that much better if they had been all the way cooked, because the batter was ill-spiced.
Less obvious disappointment #3:
The buns were common white bread buns that you can pick up in any grocery store. Don't offer me something that I can just as easily buy at Safeway. Including the American cheese that passed for cheese on the burgers. If I want to add American cheese to my burger, I'll buy a pack at the grocery store and do it myself, because why the fuck do I want to pay $0.60 for a single slice of fucking American cheese? So tell me upfront that your cheese option is only American.
Less obvious disappointment #4:
My kids got shakes because, you know, shakes, and the shakes didn't even meet approval. The shakes got shrugs of okayness. How hard is it to make a decent shake? Too difficult for Habit Burger, I guess. It made me want to drive them over to McDonald's and have them compare for me. Not that would have been any real help since I didn't try the shakes and I haven't had a McDonald's shake in... um... I don't think my fingers go that high.
At this point, the only thing I can say that Habit Burger has going for it is their pricing which, I think, isn't bad? I don't really know since fast food establishments are not places I frequently visit. All I know is that they were cheaper than Five Guys (but I'll get to them some other time).
On the one hand, some of these issues were specific to the particular Habit Burger we went to (like the order being incorrect); however, assuming all of those issues had been fixed, it still wasn't a very good burger, so I'm not sure what all of the hype is about. They didn't rise to the level of McDonald's or Burger King and, let's face it, those are pretty low bars.
Needless to say, we won't be returning to Habit Burger. As I said on FaceBook, they don't even rise to the level of emergency food.
Mostly, I've had the urge to do reviews on places that I've enjoyed. Actually, that's completely true... until today, but I'll work my way back through the restaurants I think are really worthy of being visited.
However, today, I'm going to warn you away from a place, and I'm starting here because this is a chain place, whereas most of the places I'll be talking about are local spots. Which may not be the most helpful for most of you out there, but we don't (1) eat out all that much and (2), when we do, we don't visit many chain establishments.
But we went to Habit Burger, which is supposed to be a big deal; I was sorely disappointed.
See, my daughter is a bit of a burger fan, a thing that is somewhat related to softball and going to tournaments and getting her burgers on the road. It's only natural that she wanted to try Habit Burger when it moved into our area. As it happened, New Year's Day turned out to be a great time to do that because we'd been off doing other things, and I wasn't going to be able to cook dinner in any kind of reasonable time frame. Since we'd just been talking about Habit, like, the day before, I decided it would be a good time to give them a try.
Obvious disappointment #1:
They messed up the order. Despite the fact that the guy taking the order read the order back to me correctly and despite the fact that the girl who gave me our order when it was ready read off the order correctly, when we got home with the food, the order was not correct.
Less obvious disappointment #1:
Nothing was labeled, so I had to open every fucking burger wrapper to figure out who was supposed to get what, which is how I discovered the above disappointment because pickles had been left off of all of the burgers rather than off of just one of them.
Obvious disappointment #2:
The food was soggy. All of it. We don't live very far from where Habit Burger is located and ate as soon as we got home and, yet, all of the food was soggy when I took it out of the bag. If this is going to be a problem with your food, you should warn customers, like the "microwave not recommended" warnings on some frozen foods. Soggy burgers are just not pleasant. Neither are soggy onion rings.
Less obvious disappointment #2:
The onion rings and tempura green beans weren't quite cooked all the way. Both had a doughy flavor which is common when the dough doesn't cook through. Not that the onion rings would have been that much better if they had been all the way cooked, because the batter was ill-spiced.
Less obvious disappointment #3:
The buns were common white bread buns that you can pick up in any grocery store. Don't offer me something that I can just as easily buy at Safeway. Including the American cheese that passed for cheese on the burgers. If I want to add American cheese to my burger, I'll buy a pack at the grocery store and do it myself, because why the fuck do I want to pay $0.60 for a single slice of fucking American cheese? So tell me upfront that your cheese option is only American.
Less obvious disappointment #4:
My kids got shakes because, you know, shakes, and the shakes didn't even meet approval. The shakes got shrugs of okayness. How hard is it to make a decent shake? Too difficult for Habit Burger, I guess. It made me want to drive them over to McDonald's and have them compare for me. Not that would have been any real help since I didn't try the shakes and I haven't had a McDonald's shake in... um... I don't think my fingers go that high.
At this point, the only thing I can say that Habit Burger has going for it is their pricing which, I think, isn't bad? I don't really know since fast food establishments are not places I frequently visit. All I know is that they were cheaper than Five Guys (but I'll get to them some other time).
On the one hand, some of these issues were specific to the particular Habit Burger we went to (like the order being incorrect); however, assuming all of those issues had been fixed, it still wasn't a very good burger, so I'm not sure what all of the hype is about. They didn't rise to the level of McDonald's or Burger King and, let's face it, those are pretty low bars.
Needless to say, we won't be returning to Habit Burger. As I said on FaceBook, they don't even rise to the level of emergency food.
Monday, May 15, 2017
Life, Liberty, and the PURSUIT of Happiness (Part 1)
Let me make one thing very clear here before I get started:
The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document, not like the Constitution. There is nothing in it that establishes law or structures or anything of the sort. Nevertheless, we hold it as a foundational document, especially that part about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." So let's look at that for a moment:
I think the order of these three things is important, kind of like Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics:
1. All humans have the unalienable Right to Life.
(A robot may not injure a human or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm.
2. All humans have the unalienable Right to Liberty (freedom) except where it would deprive some other human of his/her Right to Life.
(A robot must obey orders from humans except when it would cause a conflict with the First Law.)
3. All humans have the unalienable Right to pursue their own Happiness except when it would deprive some other human of his/her Right to Liberty and/or Life.
(A robot must protect its own existence as long as that does not conflict with the First or Second Law.)
Just for a moment, because there is SO much in this to talk about, and I'm not even through quoting the Declaration at you yet, let's talk about this whole happiness thing, because I think we have it all messed up. Actually, I'm sure of it.
See, we've come to believe, somehow, that our Right is actually to Happiness itself, not the pursuit of it. We Americans have come to believe that we Deserve to be Happy. Part of me wants to blame it on McDonald's and that whole "you deserve a break today" crap, but it has as much to do with the current of cult of positivity as it does anything else.
The real problem isn't even the Happiness itself; it's that we have somehow decided that Happiness is the primary Law. We've culturally decided that our own individual Happinesses come ahead of other people's Liberty and Life. And that's just fucked up. No, seriously, it is.
Here's from an actual conversation I had with someone back around the end of October/beginning of November last year (yes, that puts it heading into the election):
Him: But I want to make more money at my job.
Me: It's the Democrats who want to raise the minimum wage...
Him: Fuck that! I don't want to raise the minimum wage. I won't get a raise if the minimum wage is raised. In fact, I don't want it raised at all.
Me: But it would help...
Him: Fuck them! If they can't get a job that pays better than minimum wage, then they don't deserve to make more anyway.
Me: I was going to say it would help the economy, but that's an amazing attitude.
Him: I don't care about the economy. I just want to make more money.
Clearly, he didn't have any real concept of what the economy even is, and he was adamant in his disdain for minimum wage employs, lumping most of them in as "Mexicans, anyway, probably illegals" who don't deserve anything better than they're getting especially if it meant that he wasn't going to be better off.
And he's not the only person I've talked to with that attitude, just the most flagrant about it. He had, as most people seem to have, no qualms about his own "happiness" coming at the expense of others, and he believed it was his Right. At some point toward the end of the conversation, he even said, "I have a right to be happy," which is about where I quit, because there's no good way to approach that mindset. Sure, you can say, "Well, actually, no you don't. No one has the Right to Happiness," because the response is always, "Why not?" And, possibly, "If other people get to be happy, I should get to be happy, too." And, well, those people are already missing the point.
I have to add, here, that facebook culture doesn't help with all of this, but I'm not going to go into that. There have been plenty of studies showing the validity of "keeping up with the FB Jones" and how destructive that whole thing is. And, now, I'm wondering if that's a 50s thing, which would take this whole issue back to the Boomers, probably the most narcissistic generation in the history of the world. Seriously, there's a book about it which I want to get because it sounds fascinating.
What I do know for certain is that we, as a cultural, have to abandon this idea that we have a Right to Happiness and that it's okay for it to come at the expense of others. The pursuit of happiness is not the same thing as the happiness, and we have to give up on the idea that it is and on the idea that having a lot of stuff is what is going to do that for us.
In fact, your Right to pursue your own Happiness doesn't get to come at the expense of others' Rights to pursue their own Happiness. If you think it does, you're the problem.
The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document, not like the Constitution. There is nothing in it that establishes law or structures or anything of the sort. Nevertheless, we hold it as a foundational document, especially that part about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." So let's look at that for a moment:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.Yes, I'm skipping over the equality part this time (sort of) because I talk a lot about equality. Not that I'm skipping it, I'm just allowing it to be understood that all (adult) humans have the equal unalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Also, there is nothing in this that is a pro-life statement. I'm not arguing that one way or the other, so we're going to use the arbitrary definition of talking about "adults." Children do not, under the law, enjoy full rights. If they were allowed to pursue happiness in whatever way they wanted... well, it just wouldn't end well.
I think the order of these three things is important, kind of like Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics:
1. All humans have the unalienable Right to Life.
(A robot may not injure a human or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm.
2. All humans have the unalienable Right to Liberty (freedom) except where it would deprive some other human of his/her Right to Life.
(A robot must obey orders from humans except when it would cause a conflict with the First Law.)
3. All humans have the unalienable Right to pursue their own Happiness except when it would deprive some other human of his/her Right to Liberty and/or Life.
(A robot must protect its own existence as long as that does not conflict with the First or Second Law.)
Just for a moment, because there is SO much in this to talk about, and I'm not even through quoting the Declaration at you yet, let's talk about this whole happiness thing, because I think we have it all messed up. Actually, I'm sure of it.
See, we've come to believe, somehow, that our Right is actually to Happiness itself, not the pursuit of it. We Americans have come to believe that we Deserve to be Happy. Part of me wants to blame it on McDonald's and that whole "you deserve a break today" crap, but it has as much to do with the current of cult of positivity as it does anything else.
The real problem isn't even the Happiness itself; it's that we have somehow decided that Happiness is the primary Law. We've culturally decided that our own individual Happinesses come ahead of other people's Liberty and Life. And that's just fucked up. No, seriously, it is.
Here's from an actual conversation I had with someone back around the end of October/beginning of November last year (yes, that puts it heading into the election):
Him: But I want to make more money at my job.
Me: It's the Democrats who want to raise the minimum wage...
Him: Fuck that! I don't want to raise the minimum wage. I won't get a raise if the minimum wage is raised. In fact, I don't want it raised at all.
Me: But it would help...
Him: Fuck them! If they can't get a job that pays better than minimum wage, then they don't deserve to make more anyway.
Me: I was going to say it would help the economy, but that's an amazing attitude.
Him: I don't care about the economy. I just want to make more money.
Clearly, he didn't have any real concept of what the economy even is, and he was adamant in his disdain for minimum wage employs, lumping most of them in as "Mexicans, anyway, probably illegals" who don't deserve anything better than they're getting especially if it meant that he wasn't going to be better off.
And he's not the only person I've talked to with that attitude, just the most flagrant about it. He had, as most people seem to have, no qualms about his own "happiness" coming at the expense of others, and he believed it was his Right. At some point toward the end of the conversation, he even said, "I have a right to be happy," which is about where I quit, because there's no good way to approach that mindset. Sure, you can say, "Well, actually, no you don't. No one has the Right to Happiness," because the response is always, "Why not?" And, possibly, "If other people get to be happy, I should get to be happy, too." And, well, those people are already missing the point.
I have to add, here, that facebook culture doesn't help with all of this, but I'm not going to go into that. There have been plenty of studies showing the validity of "keeping up with the FB Jones" and how destructive that whole thing is. And, now, I'm wondering if that's a 50s thing, which would take this whole issue back to the Boomers, probably the most narcissistic generation in the history of the world. Seriously, there's a book about it which I want to get because it sounds fascinating.
What I do know for certain is that we, as a cultural, have to abandon this idea that we have a Right to Happiness and that it's okay for it to come at the expense of others. The pursuit of happiness is not the same thing as the happiness, and we have to give up on the idea that it is and on the idea that having a lot of stuff is what is going to do that for us.
In fact, your Right to pursue your own Happiness doesn't get to come at the expense of others' Rights to pursue their own Happiness. If you think it does, you're the problem.
Monday, June 1, 2015
Growing Up In the Race Divide (part 6c)
Picking up from 6b...
Lunches were included with the convention. The only problem was that the lunches were horrible. Well, that might not quite be fair. Maybe the food was good, but it was frozen, so who would know? Seriously, the first day, we all went and got our boxed lunch, which was fried chicken (and we thought that was awesome because we'd expected crappy bologna sandwiches or something), but, when we went to eat it, it was still frozen. None of us were happy.
The next day, the day of the elevator incident, Jeff decided that we were going out to lunch (and we discovered we were not a democracy despite being in Washington D.C.). Of course, we didn't know where anything was, but that wasn't a hindrance to Jeff. We would just walk until we found something!
Fortunately, the lunch break was rather long (like three hours? maybe four?), because that was also our sight-seeing time. So we walked and we saw bits of the city that we would never have seen on one of the bus tours and, finally, we found a place to eat.
It was a little burger joint; you know, one of those hole-in-the-wall kind of places owned by someone who knows how to cook. I mean really knows how to cook. We strolled in as if it was McDonald's. Which is to say that it wasn't McDonald's, and it wasn't McDonald's in the way that apples are not oranges. Because, see, Burger King and McDonald's are both oranges, and this was not that, and we were the only white people in the place. A relatively crowded place where every eye turned to stare at us when we walked in. Stared at us hard. Stared at us hard enough that we could feel it, which is saying a lot.
After a moment, they all turned away and ignored us just as hard as they had stared at us. We got in line. The ignoring was more uncomfort-making than the staring had been. Especially when we made it to the front of the line and they continued ignoring us. Then, they started taking orders from people behind us, and none of us knew what to say. I mean, it was obvious they knew we were there, and it was just as obvious that they were not going to acknowledge our presence.
Bob and the girl started nudging Jeff and whispering, "Let's just go." He kept saying, "No." One of them started in about being hungry, and I pointed out that we weren't going to have enough time to find another place to eat if we stayed for much longer. Jeff said he wasn't leaving without being served. It was all so very unreal. Almost like we didn't even exist. No, it was exactly like we didn't exist. It could have been right out of the Twilight Zone. Except the racist version.
Eventually, the lunch rush was over and there were no more people coming in. Eventually, we were the only ones standing there. Eventually, people started emptying out of the place, and we were still standing there. And Jeff wouldn't leave.
Jeff wouldn't leave!
But, eventually, the guy behind the counter gave in. I think we'd been standing there at least an hour at that point. He took our order, and we sat down to wait. They didn't actually make us wait an inordinate amount of time for the burgers.
You know what? All of it, all of the waiting, was worth it. To that point in my life, that was the best burger I'd ever had. By far. It was amazing, and it still occupies a mythical place in my mind. The mythical place of "best burger ever." We told them that, too, before we left. They actually looked gratified.
And we made it back to the convention center on time. Barely.
So the obvious point here is that racism can go both ways and, while that is a point, that is not the point. The point is that we would never have gotten away with what we did if we weren't white. No one threatened us. No one called us names. No one resorted to violence towards us. In an opposite circumstance, a group of black kids in a white establishment like that would have been forced to leave, if not through words then through actions.
It was an eye opening experience, to say the least, and a valuable lesson that I have never forgotten.
Now, the epilogue to the elevator incident:
After the "success" of our lunch outing, Jeff decided that we should walk back to the hotel from the convention center. Despite the points of not really knowing the way (he said, "How hard could it be? We just need to go toward the Capitol.") and not knowing how far it was (his logic was that it only took, like, five minutes by the Metro, so how far could it be?), we learned, again, how much not a democracy we were. After all, he was in charge. Right? So we walked...
And we walked...
And we walked some more. Somewhere in there, we stopped for food, but that went more smoothly than lunch had gone, and we walked some more.
We finally made it back to the hotel some time close to midnight. Only three-ish hours late. On the door, on all the doors, was a bulletin. Someone had set off the fire alarm in the hotel that morning (and after the incident with the actual fire at the other hotel, no one thought it was funny), and they were looking for the perpetrators -- there was a reward and everything -- so they could send them home at their own expense.
We were horrified.
Jeff started giving orders about how we shouldn't talk about the thing in the elevator and rushing us up to the room and, generally, making us more freaked out than we already were. Bob and I spent the rest of the trip with this fear poking the backs of our heads that we were going to get found out and sent home. And we didn't have any money to pay to be sent home! We'd worked and scraped to get enough money just to go on the trip. There was nothing left over!
Jeff, though, he was fine. See, unbeknownst to us, he went and did some asking around about it and found out the elevator thing was isolated to the elevator and what they were looking for was someone who had actually set off the hotel fire alarm and caused an evacuation until they figured out that it was a false alarm. Of course, it didn't occur to him to tell us that we had nothing to worry about. We didn't find that out until we were on our way home and one of us said, "Well, I guess we don't have to worry about getting sent home, now." He just laughed.
Yeah, thanks, Jeff.
Lunches were included with the convention. The only problem was that the lunches were horrible. Well, that might not quite be fair. Maybe the food was good, but it was frozen, so who would know? Seriously, the first day, we all went and got our boxed lunch, which was fried chicken (and we thought that was awesome because we'd expected crappy bologna sandwiches or something), but, when we went to eat it, it was still frozen. None of us were happy.
The next day, the day of the elevator incident, Jeff decided that we were going out to lunch (and we discovered we were not a democracy despite being in Washington D.C.). Of course, we didn't know where anything was, but that wasn't a hindrance to Jeff. We would just walk until we found something!
Fortunately, the lunch break was rather long (like three hours? maybe four?), because that was also our sight-seeing time. So we walked and we saw bits of the city that we would never have seen on one of the bus tours and, finally, we found a place to eat.
It was a little burger joint; you know, one of those hole-in-the-wall kind of places owned by someone who knows how to cook. I mean really knows how to cook. We strolled in as if it was McDonald's. Which is to say that it wasn't McDonald's, and it wasn't McDonald's in the way that apples are not oranges. Because, see, Burger King and McDonald's are both oranges, and this was not that, and we were the only white people in the place. A relatively crowded place where every eye turned to stare at us when we walked in. Stared at us hard. Stared at us hard enough that we could feel it, which is saying a lot.
After a moment, they all turned away and ignored us just as hard as they had stared at us. We got in line. The ignoring was more uncomfort-making than the staring had been. Especially when we made it to the front of the line and they continued ignoring us. Then, they started taking orders from people behind us, and none of us knew what to say. I mean, it was obvious they knew we were there, and it was just as obvious that they were not going to acknowledge our presence.
Bob and the girl started nudging Jeff and whispering, "Let's just go." He kept saying, "No." One of them started in about being hungry, and I pointed out that we weren't going to have enough time to find another place to eat if we stayed for much longer. Jeff said he wasn't leaving without being served. It was all so very unreal. Almost like we didn't even exist. No, it was exactly like we didn't exist. It could have been right out of the Twilight Zone. Except the racist version.
Eventually, the lunch rush was over and there were no more people coming in. Eventually, we were the only ones standing there. Eventually, people started emptying out of the place, and we were still standing there. And Jeff wouldn't leave.
Jeff wouldn't leave!
But, eventually, the guy behind the counter gave in. I think we'd been standing there at least an hour at that point. He took our order, and we sat down to wait. They didn't actually make us wait an inordinate amount of time for the burgers.
You know what? All of it, all of the waiting, was worth it. To that point in my life, that was the best burger I'd ever had. By far. It was amazing, and it still occupies a mythical place in my mind. The mythical place of "best burger ever." We told them that, too, before we left. They actually looked gratified.
And we made it back to the convention center on time. Barely.
So the obvious point here is that racism can go both ways and, while that is a point, that is not the point. The point is that we would never have gotten away with what we did if we weren't white. No one threatened us. No one called us names. No one resorted to violence towards us. In an opposite circumstance, a group of black kids in a white establishment like that would have been forced to leave, if not through words then through actions.
It was an eye opening experience, to say the least, and a valuable lesson that I have never forgotten.
Now, the epilogue to the elevator incident:
After the "success" of our lunch outing, Jeff decided that we should walk back to the hotel from the convention center. Despite the points of not really knowing the way (he said, "How hard could it be? We just need to go toward the Capitol.") and not knowing how far it was (his logic was that it only took, like, five minutes by the Metro, so how far could it be?), we learned, again, how much not a democracy we were. After all, he was in charge. Right? So we walked...
And we walked...
And we walked some more. Somewhere in there, we stopped for food, but that went more smoothly than lunch had gone, and we walked some more.
We finally made it back to the hotel some time close to midnight. Only three-ish hours late. On the door, on all the doors, was a bulletin. Someone had set off the fire alarm in the hotel that morning (and after the incident with the actual fire at the other hotel, no one thought it was funny), and they were looking for the perpetrators -- there was a reward and everything -- so they could send them home at their own expense.
We were horrified.
Jeff started giving orders about how we shouldn't talk about the thing in the elevator and rushing us up to the room and, generally, making us more freaked out than we already were. Bob and I spent the rest of the trip with this fear poking the backs of our heads that we were going to get found out and sent home. And we didn't have any money to pay to be sent home! We'd worked and scraped to get enough money just to go on the trip. There was nothing left over!
Jeff, though, he was fine. See, unbeknownst to us, he went and did some asking around about it and found out the elevator thing was isolated to the elevator and what they were looking for was someone who had actually set off the hotel fire alarm and caused an evacuation until they figured out that it was a false alarm. Of course, it didn't occur to him to tell us that we had nothing to worry about. We didn't find that out until we were on our way home and one of us said, "Well, I guess we don't have to worry about getting sent home, now." He just laughed.
Yeah, thanks, Jeff.
Monday, March 23, 2015
Growing Up In the Race Divide (part 2)
Ironically enough, my first encounter with racism had to do with myself. Let me explain!
But, first, go back and read part one of this series.
I didn't get very many birthday parties when I was a kid. In fact, I got a sum total of two. The first one was during first grade. My mom actually gave me a party at McDonald's, which is probably something that I wanted to do because what kid doesn't want to do that? Okay, kids these days probably don't want to do that so much but, back in the 70s, it was a cool, new thing to do. The problem was that, due to the cost, I was limited to something like only five friends. Or four. Some small number. It meant making some hard choices as to whom to invite.
Three of the people were a given. Two of them, the boys, were my best friends all through elementary school. Well, that elementary school, at any rate. The other was a girl who would end being my longest running friend. Basically, she and I grew up together from kindergarten until we graduated high school. Of course, I didn't know that was going to be the case in first grade, but it says something, I suppose, that she was one of my best friends even then. All three of them were at that party.
There may or may not have been one other person there but, if there was, I can't remember who it was.
The issue, though, arose over the "last person" I invited.
I remember the discussion with my mother about whom I was going to invite. On the list were the three (or four) people who ended up coming, and I had one more person to go. I was conflicted. I could either invite Derrick, a black boy in my class at school and next in line on the "friend scale" after the people I had already invited, or I could invite Chris, a boy who had lived down the block from me before we'd moved and had gone to my school until he moved. He had been one of my close playmates for a couple of years, but I hadn't seen him since he left my school. Playdates weren't a thing back in 1977 so inviting him to my party seemed to be the only way to get to see him again. I ended up choosing Chris over Derrick.
That turned into a problem. Chris didn't show up to the party, so my mom wanted me to call Derrick to see if he could come because she had to pay for the guest whether there was a person there or not. So there we were at the party and my mom was telling me to call Derrick and also telling me about how upset Derrick had been not to be invited and that Derrick's mom had even called her and said that I didn't invite Derrick because he was black. Basically, my mom was shifting the racism comment onto me.
Of course, she hadn't told me any of this ahead of time. She waited until we were actually having the party. Evidently, she'd suspected Chris wasn't going to show because his mother hadn't RSVP'd, and my mom was upset about wasting the money. The problem is that I can't remember whom she'd wanted me to invite in the first place. I remember there being a discussion about it, but the only part I remember is that I wanted Chris to be at the party more than I wanted Derrick at the part because it had been close to a year since I'd seen him.
The party was... traumatic. The only thing I remember is being on the phone, listening to it ringing and ringing, and my mom telling me that I didn't invite Derrick because he was black. And crying. I was pretty horrified, too, at the thought that Derrick would think I left him out because he was black, which just wasn't true. And, of course, no one answered the phone. Because Derrick's mom had taken him to do something fun and special because he didn't get invited to my party. The party I can't remember.
I don't remember our friendship being the same after that, and I have always always felt bad about what happened over that birthday party. Sure, yeah, I know it wasn't my fault. I was barely over a hand old. But that doesn't change the emotion involved. In general, when they ask that question about things you would change in your past if you could, I don't have a lot of those things, but this is one. I would certainly go back and invite Derrick instead. If I'd known how important it was to him, I wouldn't have cared about Chris being there at all.
But I didn't know.
It was this relationship, though, that inspired the character of Derrik in "Christmas on the Corner." See, I did grow up in the South, and I did have black friends. Let me rephrase that: I had friends who also happened to be black, because I never thought of my friends in colors. They were just my friends. Derrik is a reflection of that dynamic and, I think, an important one. But Sam won't be having any birthday parties that Derrik doesn't get invited to.
But, first, go back and read part one of this series.
I didn't get very many birthday parties when I was a kid. In fact, I got a sum total of two. The first one was during first grade. My mom actually gave me a party at McDonald's, which is probably something that I wanted to do because what kid doesn't want to do that? Okay, kids these days probably don't want to do that so much but, back in the 70s, it was a cool, new thing to do. The problem was that, due to the cost, I was limited to something like only five friends. Or four. Some small number. It meant making some hard choices as to whom to invite.
Three of the people were a given. Two of them, the boys, were my best friends all through elementary school. Well, that elementary school, at any rate. The other was a girl who would end being my longest running friend. Basically, she and I grew up together from kindergarten until we graduated high school. Of course, I didn't know that was going to be the case in first grade, but it says something, I suppose, that she was one of my best friends even then. All three of them were at that party.
There may or may not have been one other person there but, if there was, I can't remember who it was.
The issue, though, arose over the "last person" I invited.
I remember the discussion with my mother about whom I was going to invite. On the list were the three (or four) people who ended up coming, and I had one more person to go. I was conflicted. I could either invite Derrick, a black boy in my class at school and next in line on the "friend scale" after the people I had already invited, or I could invite Chris, a boy who had lived down the block from me before we'd moved and had gone to my school until he moved. He had been one of my close playmates for a couple of years, but I hadn't seen him since he left my school. Playdates weren't a thing back in 1977 so inviting him to my party seemed to be the only way to get to see him again. I ended up choosing Chris over Derrick.
That turned into a problem. Chris didn't show up to the party, so my mom wanted me to call Derrick to see if he could come because she had to pay for the guest whether there was a person there or not. So there we were at the party and my mom was telling me to call Derrick and also telling me about how upset Derrick had been not to be invited and that Derrick's mom had even called her and said that I didn't invite Derrick because he was black. Basically, my mom was shifting the racism comment onto me.
Of course, she hadn't told me any of this ahead of time. She waited until we were actually having the party. Evidently, she'd suspected Chris wasn't going to show because his mother hadn't RSVP'd, and my mom was upset about wasting the money. The problem is that I can't remember whom she'd wanted me to invite in the first place. I remember there being a discussion about it, but the only part I remember is that I wanted Chris to be at the party more than I wanted Derrick at the part because it had been close to a year since I'd seen him.
The party was... traumatic. The only thing I remember is being on the phone, listening to it ringing and ringing, and my mom telling me that I didn't invite Derrick because he was black. And crying. I was pretty horrified, too, at the thought that Derrick would think I left him out because he was black, which just wasn't true. And, of course, no one answered the phone. Because Derrick's mom had taken him to do something fun and special because he didn't get invited to my party. The party I can't remember.
I don't remember our friendship being the same after that, and I have always always felt bad about what happened over that birthday party. Sure, yeah, I know it wasn't my fault. I was barely over a hand old. But that doesn't change the emotion involved. In general, when they ask that question about things you would change in your past if you could, I don't have a lot of those things, but this is one. I would certainly go back and invite Derrick instead. If I'd known how important it was to him, I wouldn't have cared about Chris being there at all.
But I didn't know.
It was this relationship, though, that inspired the character of Derrik in "Christmas on the Corner." See, I did grow up in the South, and I did have black friends. Let me rephrase that: I had friends who also happened to be black, because I never thought of my friends in colors. They were just my friends. Derrik is a reflection of that dynamic and, I think, an important one. But Sam won't be having any birthday parties that Derrik doesn't get invited to.
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
The Illusion of Plums (an IWSG post)
When I was a kid, I loved grapes. Which is not to say that I don't like grapes now; I do. But, when I was a kid, I loved them. There was no better option for fruit, not even watermelon (which I can no longer eat). Well... except plums.
Plums were like... they were like great, big, giant grapes (yes, I know those are redundant adjectives, but that's how I thought of them as a kid, and kids like to use redundant adjectives). That's what they looked like, anyway, giant, non-green grapes, so my cousins and I were always excited about the prospect of plums.
There was only one problem. They were always a disappointment. Plums were never as good as they looked like they ought to be. As I grew up, I continued to love the idea of plums, but the reality of them was always such a disappointment. They just kind of don't have any flavor.
I started to kind of hate them.
I thought the whole thing with the plums was just me, and, every so often, I'd buy a few just to see, you know, if anything had changed. Maybe, just one time, I would eat one, and it would be as good as it looked. That's never happened. At some point after some years of marriage, while doing that hopeful "maybe this time" thing, I found out that my wife felt the same way about plums as I do.
It wasn't just me! And, well, maybe it's everyone. People just eating plums because they look like they ought to be the most awesome thing ever when they're really not. My daughter, though, she likes them, but, then, she is the one in our family who really likes processed foods, and plums are the closest thing you can get to processed food flavor in a fresh fruit. So, well, maybe people really do like plums since people mostly really like processed stuff better than natural stuff. Hence McDonald's.
As far as I'm concerned, plums are merely an illusion. A fabrication of something better than they actually are. Sort of like people. Mostly, that's okay, that thing with people being an illusion of whom they'd like to be rather than what they really are. I think we just accept that and go about our business. But it's disappointing when you're actually forced to take a bite... um, I mean, deal with someone and you're confronted with the reality that we try to ignore on a daily basis.
I'm sure everyone has had to deal with that in some form or another. It's just difficult to avoid. Like that time in college when my cousin called me at 1:00am because he had a flat and would I please come change it for him. Because, really, me? as the mechanic guy? I'm just not that guy. But I dragged myself out of bed and drove the 45 minutes to where he was and I fixed his tire in the middle of the night. A week later, I needed a ride to somewhere we were both going, and I was mostly on his way to the place, and he totally blew me off and wouldn't give me a ride. Yeah, I'm sure everyone has had their "plum" incidents.
Back when I was first writing The House on the Corner, I ran into this kind of stuff a lot. I was reading chapters of the unfinished book in one of my kids' classes, so I had people asking me about the book all the time, about when it would be finished, and about how they just couldn't wait to buy a copy. So, eventually, it was finished and, then, it was available as a book... and, foolishly, I thought some of those people were actually going to buy the book. Sure, I knew not all of the would, but I expected some sales. I think I had two, so, I guess, technically, that was some. But it was very disappointing. It wasn't like I'd been pushing the book on anyone or trying to get them to buy it or anything. These were people that were coming up to me, initiating the conversation, and saying, "I can't wait." And, you know, I get that they were trying to be supportive, but they were doing it by offering me an illusion. By looking better than they were.
I was reminded of all of this through my recent experience with collecting the first five Shadow Spinner parts into one edition: "Shadow Spinner: Collection 1: Tiberius (Parts 1-5)." I hate asking people for favors or for help because of the... "plumness" of people, and that situation is why. It makes it difficult, sometimes, to think that any of this is worth the bother. [Not the writing, I'm not talking about that. I about talking about this. >spreads arms out to encompass the blog<] I mean, not that I went out in the middle of the night to change the tire on my cousin's car so that he would "return the favor" and give me a ride later--I didn't know I'd even need that ride--but you'd think that getting up in the middle of the night, driving nearly an hour, and changing a tire in the dark (and only the second flat I'd ever changed) would earn you some consideration, right? But that's the fault in the thinking. You can't expect any consideration or anything back. You do what you do because you do it, just like I would have gone to help my cousin even if I'd known he'd refuse to give me a ride the next week. And I'll keep doing what I do because it's what I do and I want to help other authors out by doing reviews and putting their stories in my stuff so that other people that might not normally come across that author will get the chance to do so and, well, whatever else I think of to help out.
But, still, sometimes it might be nice if people were more like nectarines...
[This is an IWSG post.]
There was only one problem. They were always a disappointment. Plums were never as good as they looked like they ought to be. As I grew up, I continued to love the idea of plums, but the reality of them was always such a disappointment. They just kind of don't have any flavor.
I started to kind of hate them.
I thought the whole thing with the plums was just me, and, every so often, I'd buy a few just to see, you know, if anything had changed. Maybe, just one time, I would eat one, and it would be as good as it looked. That's never happened. At some point after some years of marriage, while doing that hopeful "maybe this time" thing, I found out that my wife felt the same way about plums as I do.
It wasn't just me! And, well, maybe it's everyone. People just eating plums because they look like they ought to be the most awesome thing ever when they're really not. My daughter, though, she likes them, but, then, she is the one in our family who really likes processed foods, and plums are the closest thing you can get to processed food flavor in a fresh fruit. So, well, maybe people really do like plums since people mostly really like processed stuff better than natural stuff. Hence McDonald's.
As far as I'm concerned, plums are merely an illusion. A fabrication of something better than they actually are. Sort of like people. Mostly, that's okay, that thing with people being an illusion of whom they'd like to be rather than what they really are. I think we just accept that and go about our business. But it's disappointing when you're actually forced to take a bite... um, I mean, deal with someone and you're confronted with the reality that we try to ignore on a daily basis.
I'm sure everyone has had to deal with that in some form or another. It's just difficult to avoid. Like that time in college when my cousin called me at 1:00am because he had a flat and would I please come change it for him. Because, really, me? as the mechanic guy? I'm just not that guy. But I dragged myself out of bed and drove the 45 minutes to where he was and I fixed his tire in the middle of the night. A week later, I needed a ride to somewhere we were both going, and I was mostly on his way to the place, and he totally blew me off and wouldn't give me a ride. Yeah, I'm sure everyone has had their "plum" incidents.
Back when I was first writing The House on the Corner, I ran into this kind of stuff a lot. I was reading chapters of the unfinished book in one of my kids' classes, so I had people asking me about the book all the time, about when it would be finished, and about how they just couldn't wait to buy a copy. So, eventually, it was finished and, then, it was available as a book... and, foolishly, I thought some of those people were actually going to buy the book. Sure, I knew not all of the would, but I expected some sales. I think I had two, so, I guess, technically, that was some. But it was very disappointing. It wasn't like I'd been pushing the book on anyone or trying to get them to buy it or anything. These were people that were coming up to me, initiating the conversation, and saying, "I can't wait." And, you know, I get that they were trying to be supportive, but they were doing it by offering me an illusion. By looking better than they were.
I was reminded of all of this through my recent experience with collecting the first five Shadow Spinner parts into one edition: "Shadow Spinner: Collection 1: Tiberius (Parts 1-5)." I hate asking people for favors or for help because of the... "plumness" of people, and that situation is why. It makes it difficult, sometimes, to think that any of this is worth the bother. [Not the writing, I'm not talking about that. I about talking about this. >spreads arms out to encompass the blog<] I mean, not that I went out in the middle of the night to change the tire on my cousin's car so that he would "return the favor" and give me a ride later--I didn't know I'd even need that ride--but you'd think that getting up in the middle of the night, driving nearly an hour, and changing a tire in the dark (and only the second flat I'd ever changed) would earn you some consideration, right? But that's the fault in the thinking. You can't expect any consideration or anything back. You do what you do because you do it, just like I would have gone to help my cousin even if I'd known he'd refuse to give me a ride the next week. And I'll keep doing what I do because it's what I do and I want to help other authors out by doing reviews and putting their stories in my stuff so that other people that might not normally come across that author will get the chance to do so and, well, whatever else I think of to help out.
But, still, sometimes it might be nice if people were more like nectarines...
[This is an IWSG post.]
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Popcorn Reading
I love popcorn. Especially, I love movie theater popcorn. It's horrible. I can't go to a movie without wanting it. I'm sure that's what the theater wants, too, and that smell is sooo... intoxicating. I used to not be able to go to the movies without buying popcorn. Of course, movies were cheaper then. The popcorn was cheaper, too.
It wasn't really the money that made me quit buying popcorn all the time, though; it was my kids. Okay, it was the money, too, but, really, it was my kids. I mean, it's one thing for me to make the decision to put all that crap into my own body, but, back when we used to actually do (almost) a weekly movie during the summers, I didn't think I needed to put all that crap into my kids bodies, too. Even if they did enjoy it and want it.
Still enjoy it and want it.
The thing with popcorn is that it's so easy to just keep eating and eating it. Handfuls at a time. Don't give me a large bag of popcorn to hold at the theater and expect to get some. I will eat it all. You'll reach over to get some, and it will be gone. All of it. Well, there'll probably be a few loose kernels in the bottom of the bag. I won't have meant to have eaten it all, it will have just happened. The same goes for the lesser microwave popcorn at home. I will eat it. I might not even feel bad afterward.
Sugar is the same way. Things with sugar in them, anyway. It's so easy to sit down with a bag of, say, peanut butter cups and eat the whole thing without realizing it. And it makes you want more and more of it.
Eating junk makes you want to eat more junk. That's the way it's designed. Even when we know it's bad for us, we want to eat it anyway. I mean, it's been... well, it's been years since I've had a soda, but, sometimes, I still want one. And I think one can't be that bad, right? It's been years since I had one, so what could it hurt? But that will just make me want more and more. Once I re-acclimate myself to it, that is. Because, actually, having been off of sugar for so long means that anything that has any sugar in it at all is usually way too sweet for me.
The thing is, though, if you give people the option between something that's good for them and something that's bad for them, they'll usually pick the thing that's bad for them. Well, assuming it tastes good. I was certainly that way when I was a kid, which is why I grew up on soda. My kids are no different. They want to eat crap all the time. Even though we don't keep sweets and treats in the house and have a habit of not eating that way, they ask for things every single day. Every single day. EVERY SINGLE DAY! And it drives us crazy every night! NO! WE ARE NOT GOING OUT FOR ICE CREAM! NO! WE ARE NOT GOING TO SIFT FOR CUPCAKES! Why do you keep asking that when you get the same answer every day?! Oh! My! Gosh!
People, especially kids, don't have the ability to look at their food choices objectively and weigh the advantages and the disadvantages and choose accordingly. Mostly, because they can't see what the disadvantages are. Or choose not to see them. Most people respond to things the same way my younger boy responds to food:
"Yum, this is full of sugar and carbs; this is awesome!" [Even though it's objectively bad for him.]
"Yuck! That's green and leafy and disgusting!" [Even though it's good for him.]
However, if you work with the things that are good for you, eventually, you will like them. And I know, because I grew up hating broccoli and yams, hating them with a passion (at one point, I think I vowed to my mother that I would never EVER eat broccoli), but those are two of my favorite foods now. And my younger son also likes yams, now, because we kept making him eat them.
The real issue is that you have to train yourself to like the things that are good for you. And it's not easy. I grew up with a cook for a mother. A southern cook. Let me just tell you right now that the southern diet is not the most healthy in the world. Even the things in it that are good for you are cooked in such a way as to not be good for you. They'll boil the nutrients right out of anything. And, if it can't be boiled, they'll batter it and fry it. Or, you know, throw sugar all over it. Want to eat strawberries in the south? Cut them up and toss sugar on them. Why? It's already fruit; it doesn't need sugar. But that's how I ate strawberries when I was a kid. And why eat broccoli when there was fried okra as an option (and the okra smelled so much better!)?
At some point, though, you have to look at what you're putting in your body and say, "Is this good for me?" If the answer is "no," you have to train yourself into a different behavior set. And, no, I can't tell you how to do that. You have to figure that out for yourself.
Of course, I'm not really talking about food here. I mean, I am talking about food, but I'm also talking about books. Of course, I'm not the first to compare books to food. I'm probably not even the first to compare junk food to junk books. At any rate, just like most people (in the US, at least) spend way too much time eating junk food, most people that read (because most people actually do not read) spend way too much time reading junk books. Popcorn books.
A lot of people would say, "but at least they're reading something," and I almost agree with that. Except that saying that would be like saying of an adult that was still eating baby food, "well, at least, s/he's eating something." Yeah, I know it's not the same, but it kind of is.
See, I know some people that like to brag about how many books they read. And, yes, they read a lot of books. A couple of them read, like, 250 books a year. But they're all the same kind of book (and I'm not gonna say what kind that is), and they amount to popcorn. At least, that's how I visual it. All pretty much the same with very little substance. Not challenging. Not anything.
So when someone says, "at least, they're reading;" I think, "I'm not so sure about that."
I don't have a problem with reading for pleasure. Reading is great, and reading should be enjoyable. I also think reading should prompt us to think and, hopefully, to grow. The occasional treat is fine, but you really shouldn't try to live off of them (treats), just like you shouldn't use McDonald's as your dietary staple. Okay, McDonald's is trying to reform a little, so we'll go with Burger King. [Actually, it's been so long since I ate at either of those places, I don't know how they are.]
Other than observing people that just read the equivalent of literary junk food all the time, it's my own kids that got me thinking about this. Just like not letting them have popcorn all the time, I can't let them read easy, non-challenging books all the time.
When I was a kid, I didn't have anyone to help me navigate books. My family does not read. I stumbled my way through on Hardy Boys and stuff I could pick up at school until I started having things assigned to me, and, even then, in my head there was a differentiation between what I read on my own and what I was assigned at school. It didn't matter that I liked the books I was being assigned at school; they were still a different category, so I spent my time otherwise reading literary junk. It wasn't until my junior year of high school that I figured out that I could explore "real" literature on my own. Of course, by that time, I'd wasted seven years of reading on (mostly) popcorn.
I don't want my kids to do that. Not that I force them to read anything, but I do make suggestions.
There's nothing wrong with reading the occasional piece of fluff. It's nice to have a mental break from thinking from time to time. It's something else entirely to devote yourself to only mental fluff. It makes it difficult to recognize something that is actually, really, good, because it's too challenging to get into. Everyone should challenge themselves to grow as readers. To start reading, to read more broadly, to read more deeply. Learn to like your broccoli and yams. I did.
It wasn't really the money that made me quit buying popcorn all the time, though; it was my kids. Okay, it was the money, too, but, really, it was my kids. I mean, it's one thing for me to make the decision to put all that crap into my own body, but, back when we used to actually do (almost) a weekly movie during the summers, I didn't think I needed to put all that crap into my kids bodies, too. Even if they did enjoy it and want it.
Still enjoy it and want it.
The thing with popcorn is that it's so easy to just keep eating and eating it. Handfuls at a time. Don't give me a large bag of popcorn to hold at the theater and expect to get some. I will eat it all. You'll reach over to get some, and it will be gone. All of it. Well, there'll probably be a few loose kernels in the bottom of the bag. I won't have meant to have eaten it all, it will have just happened. The same goes for the lesser microwave popcorn at home. I will eat it. I might not even feel bad afterward.
Sugar is the same way. Things with sugar in them, anyway. It's so easy to sit down with a bag of, say, peanut butter cups and eat the whole thing without realizing it. And it makes you want more and more of it.
Eating junk makes you want to eat more junk. That's the way it's designed. Even when we know it's bad for us, we want to eat it anyway. I mean, it's been... well, it's been years since I've had a soda, but, sometimes, I still want one. And I think one can't be that bad, right? It's been years since I had one, so what could it hurt? But that will just make me want more and more. Once I re-acclimate myself to it, that is. Because, actually, having been off of sugar for so long means that anything that has any sugar in it at all is usually way too sweet for me.
The thing is, though, if you give people the option between something that's good for them and something that's bad for them, they'll usually pick the thing that's bad for them. Well, assuming it tastes good. I was certainly that way when I was a kid, which is why I grew up on soda. My kids are no different. They want to eat crap all the time. Even though we don't keep sweets and treats in the house and have a habit of not eating that way, they ask for things every single day. Every single day. EVERY SINGLE DAY! And it drives us crazy every night! NO! WE ARE NOT GOING OUT FOR ICE CREAM! NO! WE ARE NOT GOING TO SIFT FOR CUPCAKES! Why do you keep asking that when you get the same answer every day?! Oh! My! Gosh!
People, especially kids, don't have the ability to look at their food choices objectively and weigh the advantages and the disadvantages and choose accordingly. Mostly, because they can't see what the disadvantages are. Or choose not to see them. Most people respond to things the same way my younger boy responds to food:
"Yum, this is full of sugar and carbs; this is awesome!" [Even though it's objectively bad for him.]
"Yuck! That's green and leafy and disgusting!" [Even though it's good for him.]
However, if you work with the things that are good for you, eventually, you will like them. And I know, because I grew up hating broccoli and yams, hating them with a passion (at one point, I think I vowed to my mother that I would never EVER eat broccoli), but those are two of my favorite foods now. And my younger son also likes yams, now, because we kept making him eat them.
The real issue is that you have to train yourself to like the things that are good for you. And it's not easy. I grew up with a cook for a mother. A southern cook. Let me just tell you right now that the southern diet is not the most healthy in the world. Even the things in it that are good for you are cooked in such a way as to not be good for you. They'll boil the nutrients right out of anything. And, if it can't be boiled, they'll batter it and fry it. Or, you know, throw sugar all over it. Want to eat strawberries in the south? Cut them up and toss sugar on them. Why? It's already fruit; it doesn't need sugar. But that's how I ate strawberries when I was a kid. And why eat broccoli when there was fried okra as an option (and the okra smelled so much better!)?
At some point, though, you have to look at what you're putting in your body and say, "Is this good for me?" If the answer is "no," you have to train yourself into a different behavior set. And, no, I can't tell you how to do that. You have to figure that out for yourself.
Of course, I'm not really talking about food here. I mean, I am talking about food, but I'm also talking about books. Of course, I'm not the first to compare books to food. I'm probably not even the first to compare junk food to junk books. At any rate, just like most people (in the US, at least) spend way too much time eating junk food, most people that read (because most people actually do not read) spend way too much time reading junk books. Popcorn books.
A lot of people would say, "but at least they're reading something," and I almost agree with that. Except that saying that would be like saying of an adult that was still eating baby food, "well, at least, s/he's eating something." Yeah, I know it's not the same, but it kind of is.
See, I know some people that like to brag about how many books they read. And, yes, they read a lot of books. A couple of them read, like, 250 books a year. But they're all the same kind of book (and I'm not gonna say what kind that is), and they amount to popcorn. At least, that's how I visual it. All pretty much the same with very little substance. Not challenging. Not anything.
So when someone says, "at least, they're reading;" I think, "I'm not so sure about that."
I don't have a problem with reading for pleasure. Reading is great, and reading should be enjoyable. I also think reading should prompt us to think and, hopefully, to grow. The occasional treat is fine, but you really shouldn't try to live off of them (treats), just like you shouldn't use McDonald's as your dietary staple. Okay, McDonald's is trying to reform a little, so we'll go with Burger King. [Actually, it's been so long since I ate at either of those places, I don't know how they are.]
Other than observing people that just read the equivalent of literary junk food all the time, it's my own kids that got me thinking about this. Just like not letting them have popcorn all the time, I can't let them read easy, non-challenging books all the time.
When I was a kid, I didn't have anyone to help me navigate books. My family does not read. I stumbled my way through on Hardy Boys and stuff I could pick up at school until I started having things assigned to me, and, even then, in my head there was a differentiation between what I read on my own and what I was assigned at school. It didn't matter that I liked the books I was being assigned at school; they were still a different category, so I spent my time otherwise reading literary junk. It wasn't until my junior year of high school that I figured out that I could explore "real" literature on my own. Of course, by that time, I'd wasted seven years of reading on (mostly) popcorn.
I don't want my kids to do that. Not that I force them to read anything, but I do make suggestions.
There's nothing wrong with reading the occasional piece of fluff. It's nice to have a mental break from thinking from time to time. It's something else entirely to devote yourself to only mental fluff. It makes it difficult to recognize something that is actually, really, good, because it's too challenging to get into. Everyone should challenge themselves to grow as readers. To start reading, to read more broadly, to read more deeply. Learn to like your broccoli and yams. I did.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Peanut Butter and Peppermint
It was a rare summer morning that my great-grandmother did not cook a huge breakfast. Often, there would be a dozen or so of us packed around the table covered with bacon, eggs, biscuits, gravy, sausage, sometimes pancakes. I formed a lifelong love of biscuits and gravy at that table. But that morning, there was no breakfast.
My cousins, Becky and Sam, and I didn't really mind, as much as we loved those breakfasts, because that meant we got to have cereal. Cereal was something of a treat down at my great-grandmother's, because there wasn't often an occasion to have it. My aunt kept it around, though, just in case. I'm sure I was having something with those fake marshmallows in it, because my mom would never buy those kinds of cereals for home. Probably Boo-berry. The adults were all gone off somewhere, so it was just the three of us.
"I wonder if cereal would be good with ketchup on it," said Sam as we were sitting down. To put this statement in context, Sam ate everything with ketchup on it. Well, everything except cereal, evidently. Ketchup on his mashed potatoes. Ketchup on his eggs. He would literally trail the ketchup over everything on his plate for things like Thanksgiving dinner. It was kind of gross.
Not that it was entirely his fault. As a baby, in order to get him to eat baby food, my aunt would mix ketchup into it, so it was a flavor he couldn't separate from the idea of food, and, at not yet 10 (he was three years older than me), he certainly didn't have the willpower on his own to try. Heck, he was still eating everything like that when he graduated from high school.
Becky gave him an immediate response, "It would be gross."
"I'm going to try it."
"No, you're not."
"Who put you in charge?"
"I'm the oldest." And, indeed, she was. By a few months.
"So. You're not the boss of me."
"That's gross. You can't put ketchup on your cereal."
Sam turned to me, "Do you want to try ketchup on your cereal?"
"No way!"
"Well, I'm going to."
Becky was getting mad, "No, you're not!"
"You can't stop me!" And Sam got up from the table to fetch the ketchup bottle from the kitchen.
"If you put ketchup on your cereal, you're going to eat it!"
"Of course, I'm going to eat it. It's going to be great!"
Sam sat down at his bowl. I stopped eating to watch him. This was before the days of squeeze bottles, so he had to wait to for the ketchup to slowly make its way to the lip of the bottle. The three of us sat there watching, waiting, until finally a blob of ketchup fell onto the cereal. He slowly circled around the bowl, making a red ring. By the time he returned from putting the ketchup away, his milk had turned pink.
Becky and I were finishing up our bowls of cereal as Sam spooned up his first bite.
"You're going to eat all of that!"
"I already said I am!" and he popped the bite of cereal into his mouth.
But he didn't swallow it. He did that thing that people do when they put something too hot in their mouths but don't want to spit the food out. Trying to hold it in their teeth so that their tongues don't get more burned. But it was cereal, and that didn't work. He couldn't get his tongue away from it. Or the pink milk he'd created.
"Swallow it," Becky commanded.
But Sam's face came down over his bowl, and the glob of cereal fell out of his mouth into his bowl.
"I told you it was going to be gross," Becky smiled. "Now, you have to eat it."
"I'm not eating that!"
"Yes, you are! You agreed!"
"I'm not eating that! It's disgusting!"
"Well, you're not leaving this table until you eat it!"
"Says who?"
"Says me!"
"You can't make me!"
Becky squinted her eyes at Sam and gave him a hard look, "Yes, I can."
And she could, too. Sam and I both knew it. There had been an... altercation... proving it not all that long before. But Sam was my idol. Not that I didn't also look up to Becky. After all, she'd beaten Sam up in my defense, but I spent the whole summer with Becky every year and saw her on holidays and other times besides. Sam, I only saw a few times a year, so he automatically went up in esteem due to the limited time I had with him. Not to mention that he was also a boy. But I was backing Becky all the way on this one.
After all, the conditions had been clearly set at the outset, and Sam had agreed to them. It was only right that he eat the cereal.
So we sat there, the three of us. A battle of wills between my cousins, and me growing more and more bored by the minute. I wasn't good at bored. But, then, what 6ish year old is?
In the end, Becky and I left Sam sitting there at the table with the admonishment not to leave until he'd eaten that cereal. Under threat of "telling." But I no longer cared; I just wanted to go play.
I'm not sure how long he sat there at the table staring at that bowl of pink milk and the soggy substance within, but he did eventually join us. That meant a trek back to the house so that Becky could verify the truth of his statement that he'd eaten the cereal. There was no sign of it, and a search couldn't turn it up. She even looked under the table. Ironically, Sam had actually hidden the bowl under the table as he told me later, but in the time it had taken Sam to find us, someone else had found the cereal and dumped it into the tray for the dogs outside.
Let me just be clear about this: the dogs would eat anything. They got all of the table scraps all the time, and they always ate everything. Including boiled okra. But they didn't eat that cereal. Much later in the day, Becky and I found it in the dog tray. Hours and hours later. Stinking in the heart of a summer day in East Texas. Flies buzzing all around.
Sam was lucky that day. He'd had to leave for some reason that I don't remember, which is why he wasn't with us when we found the cereal. Becky would have pounded him if he had been. She wanted to remember to beat him up later, but, by the time we saw him again, she'd forgotten.
My oldest son and I were at the grocery store recently when we were both overcome with a desire for peppermint bark. I love peppermint bark. Actually, I just love peppermint, especially with chocolate. Most mornings, I have peppermint cocoa or a peppermint mocha as my morning beverage. However, buying peppermint bark wasn't really an option as we have a fairly firm prohibition in our household about buying candy. Especially when the kids still have buckets of the stuff from Halloween and more coming at Christmas. But! The conversation about how we both wanted peppermint bark lead my son to decide that he needs to invent peppermint and peanut butter as a "thing."
I had an immediate flashback to the above story about the cereal and ketchup which I then related to my son. He was unimpressed and maintains that his idea is going to be "Epic!" "Awesome!" and, even, "Epically awesome!" I remain skeptical.
Which is not to say that I don't think he should try it. After all, I imagine that there were people who were skeptical about the first mixture of peppermint with chocolate or peanut butter with chocolate. Which is his whole rationale behind this madness. If both of those items, peppermint and peanut butter, are good with chocolate, it must be true that they will be good together. My taste buds are already recoiling at the thought. (But we don't have any peppermints in the house, at the moment, so he hasn't been able to try this atrocity. Yet.)
Still, how often do we find that things we don't think will go together actually meld quite well. Like the accidental discovery of a friend in high school that french fries are really good in vanilla ice cream (seriously, he was just playing with his food, and trying to gross everyone out at the table when that discovery was made). That became a thing with us at McDonald's after that. And I had a friend in college who loved thousand island dressing on pepperoni pizza (I couldn't get behind that one, but he loved it). Or, you know, science fiction and fantasy. Who'd a thought, you know, before it was actually done the first time.
So... even though I foresee a disaster approaching of the magnitude of "Don't leave that table until you eat every last bite of that," part of me wants it to be good. Because it's trying things that don't seem to go together that makes life interesting.
[It's Thursday again. Man, these things just keep happening, don't they? The new Tib chapter is posted up there in the Tiberius tab (or you can just click here). This one is called "The Cop." Next week will be the first appearance of the man with no eyes in the chapter that will be called "The Police Car."
Also, I only have a few copies left on hand of The House on the Corner, so, if you want a signed copy in time for Christmas, order now! I'll be ordering more copies soon, but I'm not sure if they will get here in time to be sent out before Christmas.]
My cousins, Becky and Sam, and I didn't really mind, as much as we loved those breakfasts, because that meant we got to have cereal. Cereal was something of a treat down at my great-grandmother's, because there wasn't often an occasion to have it. My aunt kept it around, though, just in case. I'm sure I was having something with those fake marshmallows in it, because my mom would never buy those kinds of cereals for home. Probably Boo-berry. The adults were all gone off somewhere, so it was just the three of us.
"I wonder if cereal would be good with ketchup on it," said Sam as we were sitting down. To put this statement in context, Sam ate everything with ketchup on it. Well, everything except cereal, evidently. Ketchup on his mashed potatoes. Ketchup on his eggs. He would literally trail the ketchup over everything on his plate for things like Thanksgiving dinner. It was kind of gross.
Not that it was entirely his fault. As a baby, in order to get him to eat baby food, my aunt would mix ketchup into it, so it was a flavor he couldn't separate from the idea of food, and, at not yet 10 (he was three years older than me), he certainly didn't have the willpower on his own to try. Heck, he was still eating everything like that when he graduated from high school.
Becky gave him an immediate response, "It would be gross."
"I'm going to try it."
"No, you're not."
"Who put you in charge?"
"I'm the oldest." And, indeed, she was. By a few months.
"So. You're not the boss of me."
"That's gross. You can't put ketchup on your cereal."
Sam turned to me, "Do you want to try ketchup on your cereal?"
"No way!"
"Well, I'm going to."
Becky was getting mad, "No, you're not!"
"You can't stop me!" And Sam got up from the table to fetch the ketchup bottle from the kitchen.
"If you put ketchup on your cereal, you're going to eat it!"
"Of course, I'm going to eat it. It's going to be great!"
Sam sat down at his bowl. I stopped eating to watch him. This was before the days of squeeze bottles, so he had to wait to for the ketchup to slowly make its way to the lip of the bottle. The three of us sat there watching, waiting, until finally a blob of ketchup fell onto the cereal. He slowly circled around the bowl, making a red ring. By the time he returned from putting the ketchup away, his milk had turned pink.
Becky and I were finishing up our bowls of cereal as Sam spooned up his first bite.
"You're going to eat all of that!"
"I already said I am!" and he popped the bite of cereal into his mouth.
But he didn't swallow it. He did that thing that people do when they put something too hot in their mouths but don't want to spit the food out. Trying to hold it in their teeth so that their tongues don't get more burned. But it was cereal, and that didn't work. He couldn't get his tongue away from it. Or the pink milk he'd created.
"Swallow it," Becky commanded.
But Sam's face came down over his bowl, and the glob of cereal fell out of his mouth into his bowl.
"I told you it was going to be gross," Becky smiled. "Now, you have to eat it."
"I'm not eating that!"
"Yes, you are! You agreed!"
"I'm not eating that! It's disgusting!"
"Well, you're not leaving this table until you eat it!"
"Says who?"
"Says me!"
"You can't make me!"
Becky squinted her eyes at Sam and gave him a hard look, "Yes, I can."
And she could, too. Sam and I both knew it. There had been an... altercation... proving it not all that long before. But Sam was my idol. Not that I didn't also look up to Becky. After all, she'd beaten Sam up in my defense, but I spent the whole summer with Becky every year and saw her on holidays and other times besides. Sam, I only saw a few times a year, so he automatically went up in esteem due to the limited time I had with him. Not to mention that he was also a boy. But I was backing Becky all the way on this one.
After all, the conditions had been clearly set at the outset, and Sam had agreed to them. It was only right that he eat the cereal.
So we sat there, the three of us. A battle of wills between my cousins, and me growing more and more bored by the minute. I wasn't good at bored. But, then, what 6ish year old is?
In the end, Becky and I left Sam sitting there at the table with the admonishment not to leave until he'd eaten that cereal. Under threat of "telling." But I no longer cared; I just wanted to go play.
I'm not sure how long he sat there at the table staring at that bowl of pink milk and the soggy substance within, but he did eventually join us. That meant a trek back to the house so that Becky could verify the truth of his statement that he'd eaten the cereal. There was no sign of it, and a search couldn't turn it up. She even looked under the table. Ironically, Sam had actually hidden the bowl under the table as he told me later, but in the time it had taken Sam to find us, someone else had found the cereal and dumped it into the tray for the dogs outside.
Let me just be clear about this: the dogs would eat anything. They got all of the table scraps all the time, and they always ate everything. Including boiled okra. But they didn't eat that cereal. Much later in the day, Becky and I found it in the dog tray. Hours and hours later. Stinking in the heart of a summer day in East Texas. Flies buzzing all around.
Sam was lucky that day. He'd had to leave for some reason that I don't remember, which is why he wasn't with us when we found the cereal. Becky would have pounded him if he had been. She wanted to remember to beat him up later, but, by the time we saw him again, she'd forgotten.
My oldest son and I were at the grocery store recently when we were both overcome with a desire for peppermint bark. I love peppermint bark. Actually, I just love peppermint, especially with chocolate. Most mornings, I have peppermint cocoa or a peppermint mocha as my morning beverage. However, buying peppermint bark wasn't really an option as we have a fairly firm prohibition in our household about buying candy. Especially when the kids still have buckets of the stuff from Halloween and more coming at Christmas. But! The conversation about how we both wanted peppermint bark lead my son to decide that he needs to invent peppermint and peanut butter as a "thing."
I had an immediate flashback to the above story about the cereal and ketchup which I then related to my son. He was unimpressed and maintains that his idea is going to be "Epic!" "Awesome!" and, even, "Epically awesome!" I remain skeptical.
Which is not to say that I don't think he should try it. After all, I imagine that there were people who were skeptical about the first mixture of peppermint with chocolate or peanut butter with chocolate. Which is his whole rationale behind this madness. If both of those items, peppermint and peanut butter, are good with chocolate, it must be true that they will be good together. My taste buds are already recoiling at the thought. (But we don't have any peppermints in the house, at the moment, so he hasn't been able to try this atrocity. Yet.)
Still, how often do we find that things we don't think will go together actually meld quite well. Like the accidental discovery of a friend in high school that french fries are really good in vanilla ice cream (seriously, he was just playing with his food, and trying to gross everyone out at the table when that discovery was made). That became a thing with us at McDonald's after that. And I had a friend in college who loved thousand island dressing on pepperoni pizza (I couldn't get behind that one, but he loved it). Or, you know, science fiction and fantasy. Who'd a thought, you know, before it was actually done the first time.
So... even though I foresee a disaster approaching of the magnitude of "Don't leave that table until you eat every last bite of that," part of me wants it to be good. Because it's trying things that don't seem to go together that makes life interesting.
[It's Thursday again. Man, these things just keep happening, don't they? The new Tib chapter is posted up there in the Tiberius tab (or you can just click here). This one is called "The Cop." Next week will be the first appearance of the man with no eyes in the chapter that will be called "The Police Car."
Also, I only have a few copies left on hand of The House on the Corner, so, if you want a signed copy in time for Christmas, order now! I'll be ordering more copies soon, but I'm not sure if they will get here in time to be sent out before Christmas.]
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