Thursday, April 22, 2004

Sweet and Dirty

Yesterday I posted the story of me and a young friend, and a lesson learned.  I promised to give you another story about that kid today, and another personal growth experience.  This time, everybody wound up happy and wired, and no mastodons died. 

It was a day when the Executive Editors needed help with both kids.  Kel and I therefore drove together to their house on a “distract and amuse” mission.  I took on JV, whom I knew only too well, and Kel got set up with R and one of his four-year-old friends. 

R and JV’s folks had some strong opinions about food and diet.  The one most worth mentioning here was that it was pretty much a sugar-free household. R’s snacks were fruit and crackers, or strips of yellow and red peppers.  He seemed perfectly fine with this, and his friend, it seemed, had the same setup at his home.  Two four-year-olds, and either of them knew their aspartame from a hole in the ground.  What a world.

So what was Kel to do with these kids, to keep them out of trouble for an afternoon?  Mom sent them with her to the store to buy supplies for baking cookies.  That’s right, cookies: sweet, delicious, exotic.  Why did mom choose this activity for their distraction?  We still don’t know.  We just did as we were told. 

Kel tells me the story - I was elsewhere with the baby.  She unloaded the ingredients on the kitchen counter as the two little boys watched with curious skepticism.  She showed them the flour, the sugar, the powder - well, they were all white powders and the boys were not overly impressed with any of them.  Together, they measured out some butter, added sugar and eggs and chocolate chips, and then blended up some flour and sugar and powder.  When they finally mixed the whole mess together it turned into a tacky mass of tan agglutination. 

Kelly then had the kids transfer the dough to cookie sheets.  After just a few seconds of work, though, they turned to Kel in revulsion, their hands caked with cold gooey muck.  They complained.  Kelly suggested that they taste a little of the stuff that was making their hands so messy.  Hesitantly, they raised their hands to their mouths.  When their tastebuds decyphered the flavor, their eyes bugged out of their precocious little heads.  They had discovered how the other half lived, what they’d been missing all along.  Kel had to persuade them to save some of the dough for baking instead of scarfing. 

The kids learned a valuable lesson - and not just that their parents had been ripping them off.  I think they learned something deeper, too.  It had to do with problems, and challenges, and triumph.  And sugar. 

I’ve tried to carry this lesson with me as I’ve gone through life, but honestly it’s been hard.  It turns out to be fairly unusual to be able to eat your problems - even rarer to enjoy doing so.  However, even in the midst of tribulation, I’d like to think that I can still keep a weather eye for the occasional errant chocolate chip. Some of them turn out to be made of real chocolate, I’m told.