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- 22. September 2009: Happy Birthday to me
- 18. September 2009: Frank's Comments on Into the Belly
- 6. September 2009: Into the Belly of the Beast
- 8. August 2009: My Evil Step-Father
- 3. May 2009: Original Sin
- 15. April 2009: The Great Fear: A poem & journal entry from Carole w/comments added.
- 26. March 2009: Pizza Night!
- 15. March 2009: Misperception
- 15. March 2009: Dear J.
- 11. March 2009: We are all Suffering
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The Good Ship Lollypop
Food stories. I have a few those too. I think my favorite is the Good Ship Lollipop one.
I am 5 or six years old. We are all living in a small northeastern town in PA with my father. Life is not good here. No one is happy. And we are not talking about it. My mother is teaching in the local elementary school where I am going to kindergarten. Dear old dad is not really working at all. Money was tight.
One night my mother makes liver and onions; cheap and good for you(so my mom always told us). Mmm mmm good. Ewww. It smelled gross, it tasted gross and I was not going to eat it. Not for anything. As you may already know, refusing to eat my mother’s dinner was a capital crime. Since my mother had stopped hitting her children to get them to conform to her will, I was left to sit in the kitchen alone with my uneaten liver. I was told to contemplate why I wouldn’t eat it, and why I was doing this to my mother (her words).
Now on this particular night, and this is what makes this story great, I was to be in the spring pageant at my mother’s school. I was singing the “Good Ship Lollipop” with two other girls while holding up huge lollipops. As it became clear to my mother that I was not going to figure out through solitary contemplation that I should eat my dinner, she had to come up with a plan to scare me into eating the now cold, gelatinous mess. Her anger was so intense that my sister was begging me to just eat it, fearing for my safety. But I couldn’t. My mother also has to go to the pageant as she had students performing in it too. The tension was high. Finally, after all else had failed her, she got me where it really hurt; sugar. No sugar or candy of any kind for a week. Two weeks. One month. Finally two months! Which would mean no Easter candy for me. I still didn’t care. And she knew it.
Punishment locked in place; no sugar for two months, alright. Time served with the dead cow parts; time to get ready to go. But wait, mom had not yet dealt her final blow. Because harsh punishment was never enough when she could add in some public humiliation. During that evenings performance, I would not get to keep the lollipop like the other girls on stage with me. In fact, I could not even hold it on stage. I remember the look on my teacher’s face when she asked my mother if I could just hold it during the song. I remember the teacher looking at me questioningly; like “is your mom for real? Is she really going to do this to you?”
Oh yes. She was very much for real, and she did exactly that. Over and over again, every chance she got. It was shortly after that time that I remember starting to compulsively over eat. Looking for some kind of comfort I could never find from her.
4 Responses to “The Good Ship Lollypop”
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7. March 2009 at 16:32
I read this post by my sister Mary, and it reminded me that my mom never really gave up on this type of twisted torture involving food. She revelled in forcing us to eat nasty stuff, and kept it up for as long as she could.
The last incident I can remember of my mom forcing one of us to eat something hideous involved Mary. I was in high school at the time, So Mary must have been ten or eleven. She was pissed off at me for one reason or another, and served me a glass of milk at dinner that she had mixed halfway with water. I think she did this out of spite, but it was not such an unusual little sister thing to do. I watched her put the water in, so there was no way I was going to drink it. I must have said something to that effect, just to bust Mary’ chops, but my mom jumped in and turned a harmless brother sister prank into another chance to torture one of us at the dinner table.
I don’t remember all of the details clearly, but I do know that Mary was forced to sit at the table until she drank the entire glass of watery milk. Not as bad as liver or lima beans, but still disgusting. Its the thought that counts, really. I hope she learned her lesson. The only lesson I ever learned from these horror shows was that my mom was one sick bitch.
10. March 2009 at 22:08
To eat or not to eat that is the question. I won’t pretend that I can compete with you on the food story front but I’d like to share some of my memories.
In my house growing up we were allowed to choose one food not to eat. Liver was my choice. So I feel for you guys.
I recall a few humorous dinner episodes at your house. One time I burped very loudly and proudly at the dinner table. At first everyone was taken aback but I guess I appeared so clueless (plus I was a guest) so they had mercy on me. I asked what I should have done and they said that I should have gone to the bathroom to burp but then admitted that I was so loud that they would have heard me anyway.
The second event was a dinner where my parents were present. Frank and I were seated at a low table or sitting on cushions with my mom and eating chicken or turkey for dinner. The meat was so dry that neither of us wanted to eat it. But since it eventually became clear that not eating was not an option, both Frank and I stuffed our entire serving in our mouths which made it almost impossible to chew but rather humorous according to our understanding. To my disappointment, my mother made us spit it out and eat it in smaller bites.
My worst memory eating was when my dad made pigs feet stew for dinner. The taste reminded me of pig. It tasted like what a pig smells like when it is alive. If it was venison the term we’d use would be gamey. But this was the taste of a domestic pig so it tasted farmy. Animal farmy. Well, you get the idea. So, I know my dad was trying to make good food but. . . The farmy stew was paired with a side of big old string beans that were starchy and unpalatable. I forget what else we had but it was probably brown rice. Finding that there was nothing appetizing on my plate, I decided to mix everything together to see if I could improve upon my dinner. The result was a large pile of starchy farmy glop which was now cold and congealed. Needless to say I was compelled to stay at the table until I was done.
The greatest reprieve from the terror of unwanted food was the day I discovered that I could toss my unwanted food under my younger brothers high chair.
At my house now, my children are required to at least taste their food and there my be a few cross words thrown around but I don’t think that I am a food maniac or a pushover. Of course, I must defer to my children for their perspective.
11. March 2009 at 16:58
“The greatest reprieve from the terror of unwanted food was the day I discovered that I could toss my unwanted food under my younger brothers high chair.”
That is the best ever food torture avoidance trick. Somehow rolled up in cloth napkins was not successful. Go figure. In retrospect I should have removed the food after dinner rather than leaveit for Mom to discover.