Cheez-Its as a Lethal Weapon

As if living with two teenagers isn’t enough to age me on a daily basis (I found my first gray hair the other day, and I still haven’t stopped mourning) they seem to like to find new ways to test their mother’s patience and sanity.

On the note of that single gray hair, if I may digress for just one moment, it has been taunting me all week, silently whispering things in my ear like, “Any day now I will have new friends to keep me company. Remember the other day when the kids were arguing over who should make the Iced Tea, that was worth two new gray friends for me, and then the day right after that when they had a wrestling match in the living room over your son burping in the vicinity of your daughter and blowing it towards her, that was worth at least eight new hairs, or better yet, how about the other night when the ceiling almost caved in because they were upstairs going at each other because your son had once again not cleaned his room, which we all now affectionately call "Jabba's Palace", and your daughter said it smelled like boy, that one alone was worth ten or twenty".

That gray hair taunting me all day is starting to get to me, it's like that movie with Griffin Dunne (can’t think of the name of it right now) where his penis starts talking to him at the most inopportune moments (not that a can think of a good time for your penis to talk to you) but you know what I mean. Now every time the kids start going at each other over everything from who used the last bathroom cup (my daughter) to why someone’s (my son`s) underwear was sitting on the staircase, I can literally feel my brown hairs turn white. Thank God for hair dye!

Anyway, this was not the point, although I guess it could be since the following scenario which we now all lovingly refer to as "The Cheez-It Incident" should have turned all of my hair gray and then some. One of my children is a boy, a growing teenage boy who will eat anything you put in front of him even if you tell him its elephants testicles, and when he is done with that, he will eat whatever is in front of you. You would think this would be a great diet for me, since I never get to finish what is on my plate, yet mysteriously I still don`t look like Scarlett Johansson, go figure. 

My son would have been a great contestant on Fear Factor if that show was still around. Anyway, he tends to eat a lot, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week that kid has something in his mouth or is about to put something into his mouth every time you see him.

I can relate. I was married to his father who was a champion eater when I met him back when he was 19 years old. I remember one night after first dating him; he picked me up from work and took me to Roy Rogers to get some dinner before we went back to his house. Of course another digression, I believe I jusat dated myself big time by mentioning Roy Rogers, a fast-food restaurant that has been defunct for probably 15 years. 

Anyway, he asked me what I wanted when we got to the window and I said a burger, fries and a diet coke. He then proceeded to finish the order with the following, and no I am sad to say that I am not making this up or exaggerating for better effect, " 3 double R burgers, a 3 piece chicken with 2 biscuits, two large fries, a baked potato and some kind of dessert" I figured he was ordering some food for his parents or sister who I knew would be at his house when we got there.

I was wrong; I sat eating my burger as he chowed down the rest of that food in front of me. I was in awe and amazed that he not only ate it all but was able to still walk and talk after such a feast. I was convinced he would have a stroke. Needless to say I spent most of the next 17 years watching him eat like that, although once he hit his thirties he wasn’t able to do it as much without consequences. So, when my son hit 13, and 6 foot 1, all in the same day I wasn’t really worried about the eating me out of house and home phase, I had seen it before and from experience at that point, knew it was a common occurrence in teenage boys, or at least in the boys in his father`s family. 

My daughter on the other hand can’t stand it. When I have recited the above story about my second husband to her, she always wonders why I did not run out of the room screaming and never see him again. She seems to think he cornered the market on men and big appetites. I keep telling her she will be in for quite a shock when she gets married someday, and finds out they all do that to one extent or the other. 

That reminds me, I should tell her about the time we were at my cousins wedding and my husband went around to everyone's table asking if they were going to eat the fatty pieces they cut off their steaks. That story should really get her going. 

Anyway, she seems to think that I should put a door on the kitchen with a lock on it that will only let my son in at certain times for minutes at a time, giving him strict access to the kitchen and therefore the food. Her reasoning for this is that it isn’t fair that he eats all the food and then when she wants something that she saw me buy three weeks earlier and it isn’t there anymore waiting for her to finally be in the mood to eat it, she freaks out. And by freaks out I mean the following:

This time I was in my room probably reading or on the computer as that is really all I ever do (I know I have no life, we have established this already, you try having your own life living with these two). I was having what I am sure is a nice quiet evening when the silence was pierced with the sounds of my daughters screams. I tried to ignore it, listening of course to make sure no one was hurt, but ignoring it none-the-less. Now, ignoring my daughter screaming is not easy. At least three times a month neighbors call the cops thinking my daughter is being butchered to death or worse yet she is butchering us, because she has a scream that could probably register a 7.5 on the Richter scale, and goes through you like a knife.

But somehow I managed to ignore her until she truly was screaming so loud that only dogs could hear her. So I reluctantly got up and headed towards the kitchen just in time to watch my daughter throw a box of Cheez-Its at my sons head (who ducked with Jedi reflexes I might add) and watched as the box hit the ceiling fan, throwing little orange bits of Cheez-Its all over my kitchen (and we all know who ended up having to clean that up). Apparently she had wanted some of the Cheez-Its which I had bought at least a week before, and was only now in the mood for. When she got to them there were only a few left, thanks of course to my son whose idea of a bowl of cereal is to take one of my mixing bowls I use to bake a cake and filling it up with half the box and a half gallon of milk.

She was livid; you would have thought someone had shot her dog or something. She was breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling steadily with every breath and she glared at him with death daggers. My son for his part at least, was smart enough to know when to get out before blood is spilled and as he saw me enter the kitchen ran towards and behind me for cover. Coward.

Needless to say I solved this problem by....laughing. I know, not the reaction you expected but when you walk into your kitchen into the sight I saw, believe me you would have thought it funny as well. I promised my daughter that for now on I will buy her, her own box of Cheez-its that she can keep in her room, which still didn’t satisfy her. She wanted me to have my sons jaw wired shut and let him get his nourishment through a straw until he was at least as she said, "36"

Obviously I did not give in to her request and she stomped off telling me I should do something about "my son". Since that time she was taken to labeling food with her name and threats that read something like, "Touch this and I will make sure mom never has grandchildren" and nice things like that. For his part, my son is good and never touches the threat labeled food. When I told my parents this story I was given no sympathy as my father so kindly reminded me that when my then husband and I lived with them for a short period of time waiting for the closing on our house years ago, he had to take a second mortgage out on the house just so he could pay for my husband’s food.

So the moral of the story, well, I told my daughter that living with her brother will be good practice for her for when she is married, as overall men in general do have a tendency to eat a lot more than us. But she balked at this telling me that if her future husband dared do the things she has to put up with from her brother he won’t be her husband for long; my sympathies to my future son-in-law. When that didn’t work I did point out to her that compared to the times I find my son sitting on top of her on the floor farting on her head in retaliation for something she said or did to him, the food thing was way down on the list.

She responded with something that sounded an awful lot like," you should have stopped having sex after you had me." Ah...the joys of raising children. Hmmm...I think that distant sound I hear is my father laughing and thanking God that when it comes to raising children and then becoming a parent yourself, what comes around goes around. Damn, I feel another one of those urges coming on to call my parents and apologize profusely for ever being a teenager. Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi…you`re my only hope.