Roger Pires June 17, 2010
When he's not offering his take on daily life, Roger Pires spends his days as a computer systems analyst. It's not exactly a glamorous calling but hey, it pays the bills. He enjoys hockey, canoeing, snowshoeing, and spending as much time as he possibly can outdoors. He lives in Udora with his wife and two kids, who are his prime inspiration for Ravenshoe Ramblings.
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The passing of the torched
Feed Them and They Will Grow.
This should be Chapter One in every parenting book ever written. Not exactly a revelation on par with the discovery of the atom. But every parent appreciates that – along with the fear of bathing – a child’s capacity for growth is a rare oasis of certainty in an otherwise confounding process.
“What’s little Johnny going to be when he grows up?” has sent more psychics scouring the papers for a new career than any other question. Any spoon bender with a Tarot deck can no more predict whether junior will go to medical school, backpack through the Himalayas, or end up living in your basement. But of this you can be sure: those pants you bought for him a couple of weeks ago are now hovering just below the kneecap. Given a pair of jeans’ uncanny ability to avoid the laundry hamper, he’s outgrown them long before you have to wash them.
Even this bastion of predictability has its peaks and valleys. There are times when junior’s progress along the tape measure comes to a grinding halt. Dinnertime is an inquisition. At gunpoint, he agrees to take two bites of his chicken fingers but no more. You manage to negotiate a bite or two of an apple before he grumbles off to resume his fast. During these bouts of starvation, the kid redefines the word ‘finicky’. His finely tuned Veggie-o-meter can detect a molecule of broccoli in the centre of a meat loaf. Even can’t-miss treats like steak, ribs, or any other form of burnt flesh, seem to have all the appeal of a math test. You wish he would stop treating his dinner like it was radioactive.
Careful what you wish for. After spending a weekend at the Jones’ cottage, he returns craving six species of pasta and can now make his own grilled cheese sandwiches. His appetite cuts loose like Houdini from leg irons and suddenly it’s open season on the snack cupboard. Little Johnny is on a massive growth spurt and he’s taking the food bill with him.
From this moment on, your household dynamic is forever altered. The local grocery store becomes your new vacation destination. Then come the teenage years. I used to hang out with a group of scientists that forwarded a groundbreaking theory on the teenaged metabolism. Mind you, these were the type of “scientists” you find in dressing rooms after beer league hockey games, but their supposition is not without merit. The well-lubricated scholars believed teenagers have no internal organs at all. Food is stuffed into the gullet by the shovelful and is stored in a hollow cavity. Nutrients are extracted by some mysterious alchemy and the remainder is… well, you get the picture.
What parent with high school-aged eating machines would disagree? I know my parents wouldn’t. I still remember their looks of tortured defeat as they watched me snorf down a week’s wages without taking a breath. An hour later I would embark on my own Shock and Awe campaign against the refrigerator.
As I look back now, I can only thank them for their patience and understanding during their time of culinary heartache. But there is really no need. The karmic wheel never stops spinning and – like 6 a.m. hockey practices - what comes around goes around.
Those of a certain vintage remember the moment Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon and when Henderson scored for Canada. Moments carved into legend. You can add the first time junior claims the biggest steak on the grill for himself onto that pantheon of immortality. At the time, you don’t appreciate this rite of passage for what it is. In fact, you can’t believe the not-so-little fellow’s gall at encroaching on your hallowed ground. As in a modern-day fairy tale, there is a traditional pecking order to the family barbeque. Momma Bear has the thin little steak so as to increase the odds that it ends up well done. Sister may or may not have one depending on if she’s eating meat that week. Junior has his sizable acreage of prime cut. And Papa Bear, as is stipulated in the Household Charter of Rights, lays claim to the roast that takes up an entire side of the grill.
The meat arrives in the kitchen. Family members jab forks into their allotted slabs of protein. Only on this day, two forks settle into the biggest one. A silence descends on the room as the two gunslingers are about to draw. In this case, the object of their feud is not a southern belle in a low-slung dress but a hunk of sirloin the size of Albania. The combatants’ eyes narrow. They dig their forks in to the hilt. Mom and sister cower under the table. Then dad hears a voice in his head. It’s his doctor muttering about cholesterol and something called “portion control”. He releases his death grip on the meat mountain. The showdown is over. The torch is passed.
