If I didn’t like something my step dad liked it seemed to be a personal affront to him.
He was always on me about not liking mustard, which tasted too hot to me.
Or that I liked ketchup and mayonnaise together on a sandwich.
“Why do you want two sweets?! You should want one sweet and one sour, like mustard, so there’s balance!”
One day he made oatmeal and gave me, as usual, an adult sized portion.
“But I hate oatmeal.”
“You’re going to eat it and you’re going to like it. Now sit down.”
He was always telling me how I should feel.
As usual, he’s eating in front of the TV and made me eat at the kitchen table.
I hated every mushy, soggy, tasteless bite. It felt like a whole bowl of punishment. It tasted like puke that had been washed.
A half an hour went by and I had only trudged down a third of my bowl.
“Boy, you want me to set the timer?”
One of his techniques to motivate me. I chewed as I listened to the ticking away. It felt awful to speed up doing something I hated. Like turning up the volume on a song I hate.
And I was always to clean my plate. No matter the portion that he served me. There were no deals and bargaining.
I finished after an hour. I felt sick and angry and sad and frustrated. I felt so un listened to and irrelevant.
I went in the bathroom and felt so upset in my stomach that I threw up my hour long bowl of punishment.
I was glad. I thought this would prove that I had a physiological reaction to oatmeal. I wasn’t just being a difficult, finicky child.
“Dad, my stomach was so upset from the oatmeal that I threw up in the toilet. See? I really don’t like it. I wasn’t just being bad.”
He took me by the arm, back to the kitchen table, and made me eat another bowl.