hypocrite

So for dinner tonight we had nice European style sausages and mashed potatoes with other vegetables.

My mother will laugh at this because growing up, I hated mashed potato with a passion possibly only otherwise reserved for that moment when I strike a soccer ball at goal (or other times that shouldn't be mentioned here). I gagged. I nearly vomited; I really really hated that crap. But I was made to eat it, watching my sister across the table and possibly even nearly inducing sympathy gags.

But my tastes have matured and now I enjoy good mash (though I still daren't touch the stuff that's served up in the canteen at work).

And so tonight, as we sat at the table, Michael, Sam and Emily all declared their passionate and possibly genetically inherited distaste for mashed spud. Even the suggestion that they douse it liberally with tomato sauce held no sway. Do you think I felt like just the slightest hypocrite as I insisted they all eat some?

Michael and Sam ate a little (possibly bites the size of sub atomic matter) but Emily not only refused to eat the spud, but calmly trotted her plate over to the bin and dumped the rest of her vegetables in.

Well tonight we decided to give them a couple of pieces of chocolate for dessert. Emily was told that she got none until she ate some of the mash.

Let the battle ensue. We left her to it and she refused to eat, so she got no chocolate. And at the point where she came up to us full of righteous indignation saying, "Michael and Sam and Thomas all got chocolate and I'm last and I didn't get any ... Do you think that's fair?!" we had to try very very hard not to laugh as once again she was denied the reward she sought.

Eventually she ate some carrots ... and a tiny bit of mash.