Failure to Chew

a memoir

I was the pickiest eater as a child. Maybe the world. No exaggeration. My mom used to say getting food in my mouth was like trying to baptize a cat. Violent, futile, and usually ending with someone bleeding. Most kids throw tantrums about broccoli or peas. I waged psychological warfare over yogurt. A spoon would approach and I’d duck like it was a missile. Distraction tactics? She tried them all. Airplane spoon. Talking spoon. "Here comes Mickey Mouse!" spoon. Nice try, I wasn’t buying the hype. I saw through her weak attempts at culinary propaganda.

There was this one time, legend in our family lore, when I was maybe two years old. I was in the tub, naked and slippery, minding my toddler business. My mom must've seen an opening. While I was distracted by the suds or the reflection of my own belly button or whatever nonsense toddlers fixate on, she somehow got a few pieces of banana into my mouth. Actual fruit, not processed shit. Not crunchy. Her hands were shaking like she’d just disarmed a bomb. I’m sure she called every woman in her phone book the second she towel-dried me. “He ate something! He fucking ate something!” She was probably pouring herself a celebratory glass of Finlandia.

Hours later, she found me looking dazed and slightly unwell. Turns out, I never swallowed the banana. I had just squirrelled it away in the back of my cheek like a goddamn chipmunk planning for winter. Warm and brown and disgusting. That was my response to nutrition. Hide it and hope it goes away.

The only thing I would eat in 1983 were those crunchy Chinese chow mein noodles from the can. You know the ones. Yellow tin, salty as sin, no actual value to them. They weren’t even real noodles, they were like fried twigs, but to me they were gourmet. I’d gnaw on them by the handful, like some freak toddler raccoon. That was my diet for weeks, months maybe. Chow mein noodles and bathwater.

Eventually, I got so dehydrated and malnourished that I had to be hospitalized. My mom must’ve looked like she was starving me on purpose. There I was, limp and pale with the nutritional profile of a crouton. The doctors probably called Child Protective Services behind her back.

But after that scare, something changed. My body got the memo. I slowly started eating real food. Noodles that came from pots. Cheese that came from cows. Chicken that didn’t come in nugget form. By elementary school I was okay. By junior high, I was unstoppable. Dairy Queen chicken strip baskets? Two. Home Bakery maple bars on the east end of town, made by those glorious Finnish women with hands like baseball mitts? I'd eat three, easy. I became what you might call a “real boy.”

And today, I’ll eat pretty much anything. But you give me one of those old-school cans of La Choy chow mein noodles? I will go to town! Some things never change.