Never Eat Recycled Giraffe

Andy's mom tried to teach him table manners. With four boys in the house, you can just imagine what she was up against. Elbows off the table, trying everything on the menu and eating everything on your plate. Obviously, my husband took notes because he is a very grateful eater, not to mention wonderful (and polite) dinner company. My boys on the other hand? Yeah, I'm gonna need a few more years to work on that one.

At one point, his mom was trying to discourage them from drinking water before they had swallowed their food. "Drinking water like that ruins your salivary glands," she said. "When you drink before your food is gone, your salivary glands are drowned and you'll eventually lose the taste in your taste buds." Sounds scientific, doesn't it? Well, it was obviously enough for my husband, who refused to drink before swalling his food, wanting to preserve his taste buds for as long as possible.

He probably would have gone on to teach our own kids this same piece of (unverified) piece of information if he hadn't brought it up when we had his mom over for dinner a few weeks ago. "Remember when you told us that, Mom?" She was surprised. "Did I? I honestly don't remember." That made me chuckle. Us moms will come up with a host of (seemingly intelligent) information if it might convince our kids to stay on the straight and narrow.

Did your parents ever tell you something that you still hold onto today? Even though you're not quite sure of its accuracy? The truth is, we look to our parents to teach us how to live. How to think, how to work, what to believe. What we learn from them becomes part of who we are. And even if we begin to doubt its accuracy, it can be difficult to completely reverse that little voice inside our heads because it was a piece of information - or fear - that made us who we are today.

I was reminded of this fact yesterday morning, while we were having a MOPS playdate at the zoo. I had packed a lunch for me and the boys so we wouldn't have to buy anything while inside the park. My mom always did the same. If we were hungry, out would come a wonderful snack; if we were thirsty, she'd pull a water bottle out of thin air. My mom was always prepared. With four kids, she learned quickly that it paid (literally) to bring anything you could possibly need.

But just as I was setting out our food under the beautiful shade of a nearby tree, my friends were ordering a pizza for lunch and asked if I wanted any. Immediately, I was taken back to something I remember from my childhood. My mom would probably deny it now, but thirty years later, I can still hear her saying, "No honey, we're not going to buy any food at the zoo. What if they use the meat from their animals when they die?"

Add that to the fact that they call their restaurant a "Beastro," that's all I needed to hear. As a kid, I never asked about ordering a hot dog, hamburger or an ice-cream cone for crying out loud. The zoo can keep their recycled rhinocerous in their stands and save it for all of the kids and their parents that don't know any better. I'd rather have the prepackaged peanut butter and jelly sandwich my mom had made before we left the house anyway.

I'm almost thirty years old and I still remember that.

So when my friends asked if I wanted a piece of their pizza, my first response was, "No, thank you. I've got a lunch here for us." "Are you sure? We've got plenty!" I hesitated a moment and told myself there probably wasn't any truth to the idea of recycled dead lions in their meat and justified that it would be minimal anyway in a piece of pizza. Probably.

Well, the pizza was surprisingly good. My boys probably ate more than half of the two slices that were generously offered in our direction. And I just had to laugh. This is not recycled giraffe. It's just pepperoni. It was hilarous to think about the little discussion I had in my head as I ate my first EVER food bought from the zoo!

These little stories are pretty funny, but they highlight a truth I'm beginning to realize. Our kids hear EVERYTHING. They don't miss a trick. If we tell them the oven is hot, we expect them to take us at our word. If we tell them the water in Niagara Falls is made up of blue-tinted lemonade, they'd believe they could simply jump in to have a taste. I must choose my words carefully because they may be the words my boys remember for the rest of their life.

I told my MOPS friends about my mom's sage advice and Jackie said, "Oh, yeah. It's the same reason I still won't swim alone in the pool. Because I might get eaten by invisible sharks." Sharks that, apparently, only come out when you're by yourself.

Hmm, I might need to steal that one.