On liver-flavored chocolate and other parenting strategies

         My neighborhood grocery store is usually a bit of a madhouse on Saturdays.  More than once I’ve been caught in multiple shopping cart pileups as five or so people try to enter or exit, say, the pasta aisle, at exactly the same time. Fortunately, after a moment or two the standoffs usually end with a flurry of strained and desperately cheerful “excuse me’s,” and “No, excuse me’s,” as someone inevitably decides to back up and go plunge down the tea aisle, or something, instead.

         I’d just freed myself from one of these jams when I heard a little boy’s voice pleading in the way only little kids can:

     “Mommy, can I get this? Please, Mommy, can I? Can I get this? PLEASE? Mommy? Pleeeeeeease?”

        I glanced over and saw that he’d somehow gotten his hands on a big gourmet candy bar (Scharffen Berger! My favorite!), and he was gripping it in one hand and tugging on his mom’s pant leg with the other.

      His mom plucked the candy bar from his hand, turned it over and perused the back of it with a furrowed brow, apparently reading the ingredients.

        And then she gasped. 

       “This candy bar has liver in it!” She sounded deeply, genuinely betrayed by the discovery. She gave her son an alarmed glance and swiftly put the candy bar back on a shelf, as though she could hardly bear to touch it a second longer.

        Completely silenced, perhaps awestruck by the fact that he had just barely dodged a liver bullet, the boy cast one final nervous, repelled look over his shoulder at the candy bar as she led him off by the hand.

         I started laughing. Now, I can tell you definitively that the good people at Scharffen Berger haven’t introduced a line of organ-meat flavored chocolate. (“Try our new kidney truffles!”) I’m guessing this mom was busy and harassed so she whipped out a time-honored emergency parenting technique: strategic lying.

        I’m in fact frequently amused and awed by the sheer amount of creativity and strategy required of the parents of young children in my acquaintance. For example, my next-door neighbors have an adorable son who’s about two years old, and he would very much like to be a kitty. Seriously. When we first met, I said, “Hi Liam!” and he said, “Meow!” He’s fascinated by cats, and knows my cat by name, but he can't have one of his own, as his mom’s allergic. Anyway, Liam’s dad told me a great story: potty training had been a bit of a trial for all of them until inspiration struck. He decided to ask Liam where kitties go potty.

          “In a box!” Liam told them with enthusiastic conviction.

          So they put his potty chair in a box, so he could be like a kitty. And soon thereafter they had a potty-trained toddler.

        (Don’t worry about Liam. When my friend Cindy was little, she was asked what she wanted to be when she grew up. “A zebra!” she told her parents happily.  She grew up to be an attorney instead.)

        Anyhow, welcome to another week, kittens! Hope your weekend was pretty great. Do you have any good kid stories to share? Any creative parenting strategies?

Comments

[Haven Rich]

My son was a dog. He would go around barking at people and even growling if he didn't get his way. He would crawl around the house on all fours and sniffing things. Thankfully he has grown out of that phase and has taken up with legos lol.

My daughter on the other hand, I don't think she has outgrown hers yet. She insisted when she was little that she wanted to be famous...she is still headstrong on this. Matter fact, she said that once she becomes famous she will buy me a limo with a driver. I'm thinking her being famous might not be so bad lol. BTW she wants to be a famous singer (as she puts it, much like my mom would have been if I wasn't such a Diva).

[Toni Blake]

All I'm gonna say is this - I was reading along and thinking to myself: Dear God, they're putting liver in candy bars - what the *hell*? So I'm a great big dork.

[Julie Anne Long]

Haven, that's pretty funny about your son. LOL. I can't remember whether I went through an animal phase. Though I *was* crazy nutso about horses. I was walking past an elementary school a while back while the kids were at recess, and I saw two little girls playing horse—one of them was clearly the horse, as she had a jumprope looped around her waist, and the other one was sort of driving her around the playground. LOL. I thought: "If that was me, I would have been the horse." And as for your daughter...if she's *that* determined now, I'm betting she'll get there somehow.

Toni, you goose!! Though if there *was* liver in chocolate, I could feel more virtuous about eating as much of it as I do. Scharffen Berger is strictly my special occasion chocolate. :) Lindt 85% dark is my staple. I have a serious habit, boy.

[Diana]

I've never heard of Scharffen Berger, so my initial thought was, "It has LIVER in it?!" Doh! I'm actually going to Whole Foods today, so I'll try to see if it's sold there.

I don't have kids, but I used to be a third grade teaching assistant. Once a student told me that she and her mother had gone to see the movie Chicken Little. They both didn't like the movie, and my student commented, "My mom thought the movie was dumb. D-U-M." I thought that was cute.

[Diana]

So I was in the chocolate aisle at the grocery store and spotted the Scharffen Berger bars. I didn't know which flavor to choose, so I decided on milk chocolate. It's different, but good. Is it just me, or does it taste a little sour?

[Julie Anne Long]

You guys are cracking me up!! You're all thinking, "hell, people in San Francisco will eat *anything,* why not Liver-flavored chocolate?" They sell Scharffen Berger packaged specially for Trader Joe's, too, Diana, and it's a little bit cheaper, so sometimes i get it there. It *is* pretty strong, if that's what you mean by sour...thought I'm not sure whether I've had their milk chocolate...I'm such a junkie I go for the very, very dark now. 70% or 82%. The up side being that dark chocolate has far fewer calories. :) I tell myself it's health food. LOL. All Scharffen Berger chocolate I've tried has lovely subtleties of flavor and a sort of faintly fruity edge. And it's bloody expensive. LOL. So i buy it as a reward for major triumphs or as balm for disasters. :)

[Diana]

I go to Whole Foods more often than Trader Joe's because Whole Foods is closer, but more freakin' expensive. :( You are right about Scharffen Berger chocolate bars not being cheap. I bought one tiny bar today (four pieces), and it was $1.79. I also like dark chocolate, so I don't know why I didn't choose that flavor. I figured I couldn't go wrong with milk chocolate. The next time I go to Trader Joe's, I'll look for them.

[Kathy K]

I was laughing so hysterically at the liver-in-the-candy-bar story my husband stopped by to see what I found so funny. Oh, man - that mom is a GENIUS!

One kid story I have is about my now 22 year old son. Stephen has always been quite possessive of his stuff ~ toys, whatever. When he was about 2, we had bought him a small plastic red wagon that he pulled around ALL day; then every once in awhile he'd flip it over and "do something" with the wheels, just to make sure they worked. Well bedtime came along. Got him changed and in his pyjamas, teeth brushed, prayers said and a good night kiss for Grandma and Grandpa, who were visiting.
Then it was time to go to bed, wagon on the floor, beside the bed. Nope, not gonna happen! So that night, and every night for the next two weeks at least, Stephen slept with his little toy plastic wagon beside him on his pillow. The dang thing took up most of the bed!!

Or there was the time that we had gone out to dinner at Pizza Hut; my husband Joe and I, Stephen - about 3 - and our daughter Lisa - almost 2. Our kids ate, and still do, like there will be no food tomorrow, so we gotta get it now, so dinner was finished fairly quickly. Joe and I sat with our coffee while Stephen and Lisa drank their water and played with some crayons.
Fast-forward to 2 a.m.; I am awakened by a loud scream from the kids' bedroom. I run in there prepared to see who knows what and Stephen sits up in bed and screeches "I want my water!!".
Well, okay, I can get some water, don't know why it's such a big deal, but hey! the kid's only 3 after all. But ~ and I bet you know where this story is going, eh?? ~ it wasn't A glass of water he wanted, it was the glass of water left at Pizza Hut some 7 or so hours before. Geez, what do you do?
Somehow I got him settled and back to sleep, but I've got to tell you, he sure makes me think! He was, and still is, one of the most different people that I know; where he came from I just don't know! [Other than the obvious, 'kay? That I do know *grin*]

Well, that's my bit for today; my part is done and I'm on my way... gads, I better get some sleep; I'm loopy!

Take care everyone and Julie, I still want to bust a gut over the 'liver in the candy bar.' Thanks!

Kathy

[Sherrie Holmes]

Like everyone else, I was taken in by the liver chocolate story, and like everyone else I laughed like a hyena at the punch line. Great story!

Kid stories: many many years ago I was at Denny's having lunch when the little boy at the next table had to use the restroom. Apparently he couldn't get his pants back up when he was finished, and he couldn't walk because his pants were tangled at his feet, so he HOPPED through the entire restaurant to his parents' table--bare from the waist down.

The other kid story is on myself. When I was a kid, my mom told me soy sauce was actually grasshopper spit. At the dinner table we said, "Please pass the grasshopper spit," when anyone wanted the soy sauce It never occurred to me that mom might be pulling my leg. I assumed in a vague way that they had grasshopper farms and "milked" them by making them bite the rim of a glass vial, like when you collect snake venom. I'm ashamed to say I believed the grasshopper spit story until I was 24 and someone made me read the ingredients on the soy sauce bottle. I was flabbergasted. My mom had lied to me! I called her that night, all indignant, and she laughed until she cried. To this day I still can't believe I actually fell for it!

[Julie Anne Long]

Oh man, Kathy K., Sherrie, I almost spit out my tea laughing!! Those are great stories. That's an adorable story about the wagon, Kathy K. I tell you, men and their wheeled objects. I remember having a conversation with a guy once that went something like this:

ME: Do you remember Joe Smith?
GUY: Mmmm...I don't think so.
ME: He graduated same year as us.
GUY: (shrugs).
ME: Dark hair, kinda big, had a locker near yours for two years, on the swim team?
GUY: Not ringing any bells.
ME: Drove a blue 1966 mustang?
GUY: Ohhhh! THAT Joe Smith!!

And the water story slayed me, too. Who knows what was going on in his little head? It was *restaurant* water. Special water! LOL. He felt the loss of it keenly.

Sherrie...oh man, so cute. Your mom is a woman after my own heart. Grasshopper spit?? I died laughing. Of course it instantly made it more interesting to all of you kids. Clever, diabolical woman. I remember a "Calvin & Hobbes" cartoon where the only way Calvin's dad could convince him to eat brussels sprouts was by telling him they were monkey eyeballs.

Not parenting story, really, but a lying-to-children-story: I was a bratty older sister. I once convinced my little sister to name her Barbie doll "Toilette" because "it's a pretty French name."

And not to be obsessive, but I just looked at B&N online, and WTBW is the #1 bestselling historical!! Holy mackerel! It's really fun to see yourself as #1, I tell you. :) I of course took a screen shot. LOL. For posterity.

[Kathy K]

AWESOME Julie on your #1! Now I've GOTTA get that book; I've been waiting since I finished BATS ~ did I ever mention that I'm not particularly patient?? *grin*

Oh Sherrie, that story about the grasshopper spit / soy sauce is absolutely HILARIOUS! I'm still laughing about it; it will also be one of the topics at dinner tonight.
The things parents will tell their kids! And your mom, man! you probably made her day, her week - heck even her year! You'll never live that one down.... LOL But what a way to earn notoriety, even if it is among family and friends! ^.^

And Julie, about being a bratty older sister; yep, been there, done that. Most especially to the sister closest in age {there are 2 sisters - one 3 years younger the other, 5}. Two of my brothers ~ the ones old enough ~ were a team and NOT to be trifled with; Marianne and I shared a room pretty much our whole lives and did I take advantage... gads, I can't believe that we're friends now, LOL.

I'll be going now, I'm still laughing and need to get active or I'll fall off my chair.
Thanks for a great start to the day ~ the still gloomy, gray, cold day - it's been a week already! *sigh*

Take care all ^.^
Kathy

[Patricia Treskovich]

I love these type of books--how do you research to get the historical background setting right?

Pat

[Joan Novak]

How do you begin a new book? With basic idea and expand? or write the ending and back up?

[Kathy Scott]

I admire you for writing books. How do you do it?

I probably have enough stories in my life to write some books, but doing it - ha, that's another story.