Everett (10 years old at the time of this writing) has a thing for dill pickles. Every time we go grocery shopping, everyone is welcome to make whatever requests they’d like…. and his requests contain pickles 100% of the time. It’s not at all out-of-character for him to ask to stop for pickles at random times either, like when we’re coming home from swimming. Or gymnastics. Or the mail box. Once we walked to the dollar store – around a mile away – and came home with a few things, including pickles. The bag broke on the way home, when we were literally across the street from our house. Glass shattered, pickles everywhere. We carefully picked up the mess, and I told him we’d get a replacement for him the next time we went out. It was very sad, but was redeemed a little bit by the fact that I got to amuse myself by imagining the neighbors (whose house it broke in front of) coming home, sniffing, and saying to one another, “Do you smell…. pickles??”
When Everett gets pickles, the jar is opened, and the pickles are finished before it is ever closed again. He does share… but for the most part, he polishes off the whole jar largely by himself. I will joke with him that there IS such a thing as having a few pickles and then putting the rest of the jar in the fridge…. and he will respond with something along the lines of, “That’s MADNESS!”
Yesterday, he was eating the last pickle in his jar, and he suddenly said, “Do you know WHY I eat the whole jar of pickles?”
Why?
“Because. If I died, or the world ended, before I got to go back for more, my last meal would have been a single pickle. Think about it. Would you rather your last meal be one little pickle, or a whole JAR of pickles?”
……..
So there you go. Important, irrefutable (if a tad morbid) life advice from Everett.
Eat the whole damn jar of pickles.
I agree with Everett, though I stick with Claussen these days. So crunchy!
Hey maybe he can do a science project of growing, harvesting and canning his own dill pickles … but then he’d have to experiment with different types of cukes, and different recipes, and different herbs, and different vinegars … and who would eat the ones he DIDN’T like?
For me it was Olives. I’d eat the whole jar, and drink the vinegar afterward.
Can you elaborate a little more on the “everyone gets whatever they’d like when we go shopping”? How does that work, do they each get one thing, two things, have a certain amount of money to spend. Seriously my kids would fill the cart with junk!
Everyone’s welcome to request whatever they’d like, meaning…. they’re welcome to request whatever they’d like. 🙂 No limits, whether in quantity or monetary value (unless we happen to be super tight on cash that week for whatever reason) Nine times out of ten, no one wants anything special. We get a lot of, “The normal stuff is fine.” Everett’s been on his pickle kick, and Tegan (6) has her mom’s sweet tooth, so she’ll occasionally ask for something like ice cream. Sometimes they’ll ask for some special kind of fruit. My 17 year old likes grape juice, so he’ll ask for that. That’s usually pretty much it though!
Wow, okay what if you’re at a store like Walmart and they want ALL. THE. TOYS? We are on a very tight budget, so there’s no way we could say “Yes” to their every wish.
We can’t afford to say yes to their every wish either (or my every wish, or my husband’s). That’s part of life. But we still take them seriously. To be honest, most of what they buy in terms of toys, they save up their own money to buy. If we don’t have the money, and/or they don’t have the money for something they’re wanting, we talk about when we CAN get it, or help them save, or they put whatever it is on their Amazon wishlist. We’re a family, so everyone’s wishes get the same weight. Sometimes I might need to wait for something I want, and sometimes the kids might need to wait.
Can I adopt you as my BFF?! Seriously, thank you for putting to words what my heart has always wanted to say, you know that feeling, “I thought I was the only one”. I guess we are just drilled into us one way of childbearing and it’s a wonderful feeling to be free from that. Thank you for pouring your heart into your blog! I’m reading everything I can in my spare time (I have a 7, 5, 2, and 2 month old)