Friday, May 28, 2010

Strawberries vs Puffed Sugar

You can learn a lot about a girl's home life by how she eats when she's not at home.  Among the choices tonight at Girl Scouts were strawberries and mini-boxes of cereal, the sugar coated cardboard kind your parents let you eat on vacation.

One girl's eyes grew wide with shock.  Was I really going to let them eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch as a side dish?  Yeah, actually, I was.  At least they put vitamins in the ground and puffed fiber sheets before they shatter the bits and spray them with sugar.  The tortilla chips the girls used as ranch dip spoons were untroubled by healthy additives.  She had a few grapes and strawberries too but it was the cereal that held her attention.  She nibbled like a rabbit, one quick bite at a time, ready to drop the box and run if her mother burst in. 

Some of the other girls were focused on the strawberries.  Quickly, greedily, sloppily, they dove in.  How many can I take?  Can I get more?  They ate as many as they could and asked to take the rest home.  They left exactly one.  No one took the last one, that would be rude, but they took every other one.

The strawberry girls were completely puzzled by the cereal.  Why was it there?  How could cereal be party food?  They didn't touch it.  With strawberries in both hands they'd have had a hard time picking it up if they wanted to.  The cereal girl knew the joy of a good strawberry but she also knew an opportunity when she saw one.

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