What Three Meals a Day?

When I was young my dinner plate was a warzone. The battle was between the vegetables and everything else, with each side taking their place on the edges of my plate. My goal as Commander-In-Chief of this food war was to vanquish the little green enemies—to keep them out of my stomach at all costs. I thought I had won every time, until the vegetables unveiled their secret weapon: my mother. She would always swoop in at the end of my meal and force me to eat the healthy remains I had reduced to an indescribable pile of mush in the corner of my plate; reluctantly I would force down the garbled greens, angry that I had lost the most recent battle in my war on vegetables.

My mother’s will was law back then. Despite the fact she was smaller than me since I hit the age of ten she always wielded an iron fist when I came to my eating habits. She would constantly chastise me about what I was eating and what time I was eating it. Even if my meal was what conventional wisdom would deem healthy, she would complain there weren’t enough vegetables.

Perhaps it was that. Getting frequently berated by my mother made me rebellious. Maybe if she was gentler in her approach to making me eat vegetables I would not be so against them nowadays, I wouldn’t go out of my way to avoid a green leaf or eat dessert for breakfast and breakfast as a snack at three in the morning. Either way, and I hate to admit this, my eating habits are terrible. Rarely do I eat three meals a day, and if I do, it isn’t breakfast, lunch and dinner. Its dinner dinner dinner. Or lunch, dinner, breakfast. My mother is not proud.