"Sharing is good!" I once heard my uncle explain
to my then five year old cousin. That sentence has been rolling around in the
back of my head for at least 25 years now. I don't like to share, I'll tell you
that right now. So how can I teach my kids something I don't really believe in?
Sharing sucks. Especially when it comes to your kids or worse,
your husband. They just ruin your nice stuff anyway, so why give them access to
it in the first place?
Take for instance Poptarts. Strawberry filled, frosted
Poptarts, to be exact. Are there, really, any other kind worth eating? Okay,
granted for the last few years, I've been on a health kick, and have forced my
family to eat an organic, low-animal product, low processed food diet. But come
on, sometimes you just need something totally junky to make it through the day.
So when I had the chance to buy a box of Poptarts while
visiting the US, I jumped on it. I can get them here, I know. But they go for
like 5€ for a six pack (or the equivalent of roughly $6,000,000.00, give or
take). I bought them, and put them in the pantry, thinking no one would touch
them because (1) they don't know what they are and (2) it's OUR pantry, you
can't find ANYTHING in there.
So imagine my surprise, my rage, my utter loss of control,
when Sweet Papa comes in to the room with a half eaten piece of strawberry
filled goodness in his mouth saying, "This tastes like cardboard. Do you
want the other one?" If I wasn't in bed with my new laptop on my lap,
phone in my ear, and tax papers strewn all over, I would have leaped up and
strangled him. Instead I just started screaming in my phone, "What are you
doing? Are you eating my Poptarts? You, you, you, you can't touch those. Those
are sacred! Those are sacred!" I thought I was going to cry. Not only did
he eat one of my Poptarts, he made a whole pack - he sacrificed two, TWO! Poptarts
that I had been saving for the right moment to savor in peace, in quiet, alone
with my thoughts.
And then the incredible happened. I hear Kiki from the other
room saying, "I don't like it either!"
What? How many did he make? What was he thinking? Doesn't he
know? How could he not know? We've been married 14 years. How could he not know
he's not supposed to touch my stuff???!!!
"How many did you make?" I shrieked.
"Just two packs."
"Just two packs? Just two packs??!!! It's only a 6
pack. That means we only have 2 left. And we don't fly back home for another 2
months! How could you do this to me? What were you thinking?"
I started walking around the room waving my hands in the air
screaming, "How? What? Oh my God! Why do you do things like this?"
All the while still on the phone with my sister saying to her, "Can you
believe it? He ate my Poptarts! He ate my Poptarts!" She didn't seemed
phased. She tried to talk me out of buying them in the first place. She was
alright with the two family-sized jars of high fructose corn syrup infused
grape jelly, and the 60 pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and she even helped
procure the 10 boxes of Girl Scout cookies for me. But Poptarts, I guess,
crossed some kind of a line for her.
This, of course, was not the first time something like this
has happened. But I've learned to stash my good stuff away (in my closet, above
the 3 feet line, or in a cupboard, behind the first row of uninteresting
looking healthy food). I buy two sets of art supplies - one for me to cherish,
one for my kids to destroy, luckily Sweet Papa isn't interested in creating art
(unless you can eat it).
But sometimes, when I'm busy or tired, I get careless. It only
takes a second. Leave your artwork or tax papers on the table and run to lower
the heat on the pot of spaghetti boiling over on the stove and come back to
find a layer of thick red paint on your dining table, sofa, carpet, window,
cat, child's face, child's butt (because they tried to wipe it off), child's
shirt (because they tried to wipe it off again), child's arms and legs (because
wiping it off seemed like so much fun).
After three kids and a husband, there's just no place for
sacredness. I grab the plates away from Sweet Papa and Kiki and eat every last
crumb I could find, and glance over at Bugsy to see if he wants any because he's
the only one who understands how good they really are. He slowly retreats in
fear and politely says "No, thank you."
I take the remaining packets out of the cupboard and bring
them to the safety of my clothes closet. Squint my eyes, pinch my lips together
and flash Sweet Papa that "Don't you EVER touch my stuff again" look.
He just pours himself a glass of milk, puts on his headphones and loses himself
in a game of World of Tanks. The kids go back to watching the Disney channel,
and I think by now my sister has hung up on me.
