Some like it hot

Now I’m not one of those guys who, when he gets together in the pub with the other Dads every few weeks or so, ends up in a pissing-contest over everything under the sun, including the dinner-time stand-off over who can stomach the most and hottest chilli sauce on one’s hipster-grade burger.  But this does happen from time to time, and to be honest I don’t do too badly in this.  But still I wouldn’t say that I am a Capsaicophile by any stretch [although I am quite partial to made-up words].  Spicy food, though, once you don’t have it anymore … well, you really miss it.

I guess that’s the refrain of many parents these days; one way or another, your kids’ eating habits do impact on your own, and although Hambones has a bit of tolerance for the hot stuff, not so Waltzie.  All trace of chilli, paprika and even fresh ginger has more or less vanished from the cook pot these days, and one has learned to make one’s peace with an ever-reliable stock of Samoa’s Own Chilli Sauce in the pantry which is cracked open most days after any given dish is served up.

It’s a shame, and Mrs Donkey and I try to hold tight in the hope that our two darlings might get a taste for spicy food in years to come, but recently we have played host to some other kids from school at dinner time … and oh my!  We are THE-LUCKIEST-PARENTS-EVER!  We’ve had visiting kids scraping the icing off cakes, scraping the hollandaise off eggs, scraping the Nutella off toast and scraping the vegetables off … well just about everything!

‘Oh yeah, Little Darren doesn’t like potatoes that have potato in them’, and ‘Charlene prefers to have her sauce on the left side of the plate or she won’t eat’, and ‘Janine has her carrot sticks placed in individually wrapped compartments, or she won’t eat’. 

Goodness me.  Hambones and Waltzie, I am so proud of how much of the food revolution you have embraced; from pies, to burritos, to lasagne, to curries, to stirfries, to pho, to risotto … and to vegetables, just about any way they come!  You guys are amazing – thanks for joining-in with, and allowing Mrs D and I to maintain our passion for good, fresh and tasty food.

My other two kids; I know we’re not supposed to have favourites, but…

The Pokemon Betrayal

Hambones came to me the other night long after bedtime; he was visibly distraught, and so in a rare moment of empathy, I sat himon my lap and asked if he was OK.  After skirting around the issue for a while, he eventually took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and advised me that I was going to be angry about what he was about to say.

It seems that one lunch time, a week before (he’d been hanging onto this for a while), he’d offered to assist a teacher with some task or other up in the library, but didn’t know what to do with his most prized tin of Pokemon cards, which has been his obsession for months.  He couldn’t think of anywhere safe to put them, so he opted for the collection of school Lost Property under the main stairs, and he sunk the tin deep down under a pile of festering jumpers and odd socks.

He went and did the task and of course, on his return to the Lost Property, some skanky little brat had knicked the entire Pokemon stash.  Little Bastards!

Poor Hambones had been gutted with grief at this loss, but, it seems, considerably more distraught at what his grumpy father might say when he found out.  Needless to say I was kind, and placating on this occasion, and deeply affected by poor Hambones raw, emotional injury.

And now I am reflecting on the irony of it all; Hambones’ fatal decision to hide the cards in Lost Property, rather than to exercise any of the other dozen or so options available to him (to take them with him, to ask a friend to hold them, to ask a teacher to hold them, to run them up to his schoolbag…) was so illogical, and yet exactly what a seven year old kid, intent on trying to help someone and to get to it as quickly as possible would do … it’s exactly the kind of thing I would have done when I was seven.  Poor Hambones.

In the Asylum

They have this game that they play, Hambones and Waltzie.  Well, it’s not so much a game as some kind of performance they get onto.  This happens on any given day, either in company or alone, and sometimes they can be way down the other end of the house, completely on their own, and the game they are playing – whatever it is today, “Hey, pretend I am a man at the door and you don’t know I’m there…” – starts getting louder and louder, and the theatrical, shouting demands of each character become more and more outrageous, fuelled by the maniacal laughter of the other. 

…and on it goes, louder and louder, “shout shout!”, “cackle cackle!” … louder … louder…

I assume, judging by the escalating volume, that they’re performing for me … but I am miles away, so the decibels climb and the outrageous drama continues … louder … shout … louder … cackle … until eventually I crack and scream (really loudly, so as to be heard, with my sudden anger sparking out of my eyes and forehead like some villain from a 1960s comic book) for them to keep it down “..or it’ll be timeout for both of you!”.  I then return to my dishes/laundry/mopping, gutted with shame at having put a stop to something which I suddenly recognise to be innocent loveliness.

This game, or play-pattern is a constant in our house, and while I can mostly tolerate it in the home, I do get a bit [more] on edge when it happens in public.  It was on at the fruit shop the other day while I was racing around to get it all done before they completely lost it.  I’d been setting a gruelling pace that morning to get all the jobs done before we collapsed in front of the teev for the afternoon, but I wanted to do this last stop for the weekly supplies.

Hambones’d helped with the apples and pears, and Waltzie’d spent a good seven minutes looking for the broccoli before returning to the trolley with a stem of rhubarb in hand.  I’d flipped around chasing-up the loose ends, and at some stage their microchips’d been tripped again and they were back in the zone.  As we approached the checkout, their game (something about angry, flying bananas) was getting louder and crazier.

As my shoulders slumped in polite, contrite response to the regular barrage of abuse from the elderly checkout ‘hen’ for failing (yet again - that’s every week for the past eight years!) to put all my items in plastic bags, I could feel my knuckles growing whiter and whiter against the trolley in seething proportion to the crescendo of shouts and cackles that was escalating behind me. 

And just a split second before my combined embarrassment and intolerance tripped over to Def Con 1 and I spun around to give them both barrels, the matronly attendant – smiling at me for the first time in near a decade -  nodded to them and said, “They look like they get on well”, to which I looked over at Hambones and Waltzie embracing each other and squawking and grinning like a couple of loons.

I was reminded of how well they really do get on, Hambones and Waltzie, and of how very lucky I am to have them.