Either You Finish Your Carrots, Or It's Time For Another High-Stakes Game of "Snake Toss"

I get it, son. When I was your age, I didn’t like to eat my vegetables either. But think about it from my side: parenting is hard. I don’t like reprimanding you. You know I don’t. Trust me, I don’t want to pull out the box of Japanese Sand Cobras from the garage and toss them at you one after another in the hopes that you’ll catch them successfully instead of succumbing to the soul-searing, horrific pain of their venomous bite. But if you don’t eat right, I have to parent you, because that’s my job.

Look, Charlie, I took time out of my day to make you dinner, because I care about you growing up with a healthy, nutritious diet. Which is why if you don’t take a single bite of those peeled and boiled organic California carrots, I’m going to have to start repeatedly hurling toxic and aggressive East Asian serpents in your direction, hard and fast, until you start getting serious about finishing the meal I made for you.

Don’t tell me this is unreasonable; my father used to punish me the exact same way, and his father before him. It’s the first parenting lesson you’ll find with the unexpected discovery of a blood-spattered Byzantine scroll in the attic and its enclosed runic teachings. Everybody knows that. And I’m not even throwing three at a time, like Granddad did. Only one! What’s unreasonable is the fact that you don’t seem capable of taking a few more bites of a perfectly adequate side dish to your barbecued chicken.

I think I’m a pretty cool dad most of the time. Remember when I let you and Ethan spit into the fountain at the outdoor plaza downtown that time? Or when we went to the 10 o’clock showing of The Expendables? Your bedtime was past midnight that night! Your mom would never allow that. But it was awesome, because it was “Guys’ Time.” And I love Guys’ Time! Which is why I don’t want it to end at the split-second insertion of cobra fangs and subsequently painful and potentially lethal envenomation that could arise from this manner of scolding.

I’m not going to say this more than once: just please, eat your carrots, Charlie. Don’t let Ethan’s memory be in vain.

–KS ’16