"I don't like pickles!"

I think that vegetables are a challenge for anybody. Recently a co-worker of mine has been somehow brought around to eating healthier (which is always a good thing) and has been bringing in vegetables every day. He has not had the best of times eating cauliflower and broccoli, and hasn't really enjoyed the celery (he makes faces every time he eats celery).

**I remember my own vegetable shortcoming, my misgivings about what spinach actually is (and it doesn't come in cans all soggy-like). It took many years before I discovered the joy of many vegetables, mostly dominated by celery and green peppers. To this day, however, the choice of greens are limited in selection, not because I don't like them, but mostly because I am lazy and don't want to wash and slice and clean. Snickers is so much easier. I am not sure why they don't market 340 calories worth of celery in a plastic wrapper and offer it for 59 cents (by the way...remember cheap candy?). That would be a large wrapper of celery.**

Anyhow, our kids are no less trouble with vegetables than anyone else. It has been a challenge for us to get them to eat anything green at all. We are just lucky that they actually enjoy fruit, or else we would really have trouble. So we went out to eat the other night, choosing one of my new favorite chain sandwich places (Jason's Deli...THEY EVEN GIVE YOU A DILL PICKLE! now that's a deli!). Everyone was enjoying their respective meals; my club sandwich was divine, to say the least, and ever-so-filling. It came around to the time when I had sufficiently stuffed my face and began to help the boys eat their fruit servings. To help expedite this process, Jason (who I assume came up with all this marvelous food, after all it is named after him) provided us with a sweet, plain yogurt to compromise the natural and delicious taste of the strawberries and melon. The boys loved it, though, eating piece after piece bathed in this sweet yogurt. Shirley even gave up on her potato chips to join the fracas, and soon all three kids were having the wool pulled over their eyes and unsuspectingly eating at least somewhat healthy (especially compared to the chips). Then comes the light bulb...
...I think to myself, "wouldn't a pickle disguised in this yogurt be the ultimate funny gag?"
So I said to Janine, "Watch this," and proceeded to dip a minuscule slice of dill pickle in the sweet yogurt dip and offer it to my trusting daughter. The fork with foulness made its way incognito to the mouth of my daughter and her eagerness to discover once again the wonderful fresh fruit taste that she had been periodically enjoying for the previous five minutes.
Then, the truth. No sooner than she took one bite, her eyes watered rapidly, her face looked repulsed, her mouth, agape, looking to propel anything and everything that was inside outward. Our faces, waiting in anticipation of a sour face and a quick spit or half chewed sliver of pickle, quickly turned to horror as Shirley began to heave. The laughter that had accompanied this amazingly not thought out moment of trickery quickly segued into multiple apologies as Shirley continued to heave out matter that once was a mixture of fruit juice, water, hot dog, and sweet yogurt.
Oh man. Maybe it wasn't a good idea.
And then the tears. And the tears. And more apologies. And more tears.
I am the world's worst dad.
And then the sly smile. And the dissipation of the tears, the wiping away of any evidence (and covering of other evidence that splashed out square on her plate), and the nervous chuckles of a father who was afraid of being taken out back and slapped around by onlookers who were of no relation. But no, we were all safe.

We learned something that night, as my brother in law Brad taught Shirley to say in English, "I don't like pickles!"

I could say that this is the last of my tormenting of my kids, but I know it isn't. It is how my dad related to us, how we knew he cared for us, as he would flick our rumps as we walked by, or tease us about our unkempt hair or inability to see the point of brushing one's teeth, he made sure we were teased and tormented accordingly and justly. None of my siblings made it outside his sharp wit and sharper tongue (although if you ask my sisters, I may have received some favor being the only boy), but we all knew that was his way of interacting, of saying that he cared, and in spite of the tears, in spite of the getting angry, we all craved that attention to some degree, and we all knew that he loved us. So I know that I will be that foil to my children, in between the hugs, the affirmation, the playing, the disciplining, the living and growing that we will all do together, much in the same way that my pops did for me.