Sharing is good?

"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.