by: Craig Harper
Even as a teenager I learned that, as a rule, the stuff which tasted great was bad for me, and the stuff which tasted like complete crap, was gonna do me the most good. What a ridiculous notion. What kinda weird-ass, nasty prank is that to play on a fat food-loving kid? So not fair. So not a lesson that I wanted to learn.
"Whaddaya mean, donuts don't have the same nutritional value as vegetables? Let me see that research paper."
As a somewhat resourceful (code for smart-ass) chubby thirteen year-old, I actually could have run workshops for the masses:
* Vegetable Evasion 101.
* 50 creative things to do with vegetables at the dinner table, other than eat them.
* How to create the 'illusion' of vegetable eating.
* Managing your fear of vegetables through cognitive disassociation.
* Developing your own vegetable allergy.
If the entire range of vegetables started and finished with potato, I would have been a vegetable-a-holic. I could, on occasion, stretch myself to carrots, but only to keep the Vegetable Police off my back momentarily. Peas were mushy crap, the asparagus smell was worse than my school bag (that's saying something), brussel sprouts totally creeped me out, and I had re-occurring nightmares about broccoli; it reminded me of teeny, weeny trees. Didn't look like food to me. Disgusting.
For the majority of my teenage years, my mother and I actually engaged in vegetable warfare.
Gotta say, in her thirties, she was quite the tactician. She needed to be; I could spot a hidden vegetable at thirty feet. Mothers do that you know; the vegetable 'hiding' thing. They're trained in it by their mothers. And their mothers, mothers before them. We poor, simple men live in the dark when it comes to this stuff. I'll write an article on that one day.
As I got older, she became more and more skilled and increasingly cunning. Not fair really, I was just a dumb kid. You grow up thinking that mothers are all 'love and light'; they're not. They are sneaky, resourceful, creative and extremely strategic adversaries. Sure, they look all cutesy and caring; it's a complete scam. They are hard-core. They are simply vegetable pushers in frocks. Yep, many significant battles were fought at the Harper dinner table.
"I don't care how long you sit there Mister, you're not moving until you eat every last vegetable on that plate!"
"Cow" (in a feeble-under-my-breath whisper).
"What did you say to me?"
"Nothing."
"I'll give you some 'cow' around the ears in a minute, Mister backchat"
That's another thing nobody tells you - Mothers having super-human hearing; it's like some in-built, special survival mechanism, chick thing. It puts us kids at a biological disadvantage. What kinda lame-ass 'level' playing field is that? I wish I learned about the hearing trick earlier. Coulda saved myself a lot of heartache. It's amazing how scary a tiny little woman, with cooking utensils can be.
Did I mention their unique propensity to bend the truth?
"Mum, does this have broccoli in it...?"
"Hmm, don't think so.."
LIAR!
Your pants are SO on fire Mary Harper.
When it came to vegetables, she had absolutely no morals. She would lie, cheat and coerce those horrible things into my mouth. She would look at me with that innocent, 'but-I'm-your-mother-why-would-I-mislead-you' face and then proceed to lie her ass off. Even when I'd find the offending vegetable in my meal (hidden cleverly under the good stuff), she'd come out with "I don't remember putting that in there!!"
No wonder I have trust issues.
It wasn't until I hit my twenties, that I actually began to understand and appreciate the psychology and the motivation behind my mother's sneaky little habits. And yes, I did reluctantly discover that broccoli is amazingly good for me. Even though it doesn't come close to cheesecake, I consume it on a regular basis because it's good for me. Now, if only someone could only create a cheesecake with the nutritional values and benefits of broccoli! Or conversely, maybe grow some broccoli that tastes like cheesecake. Now there's a business idea.
I now use the 'Broccoli Principle' when I am working with people in the areas of personal and professional development. Even as adults, we are addicted to the 'yummy' stuff (metaphorically speaking). The stuff that's easy, the stuff that 'tastes' good, the stuff that doesn't challenge us, get us out of our comfort zone or cause us to become stronger and more capable. It's also usually the stuff that doesn't allow us to grow and be 'healthy' (psychologically, emotionally, developmentally). We 'eat' what we want, rather than what we need. We're adults behaving like spoiled brats. And what we end up with, is stunted emotional growth and personal development scurvy. In order to 'grow' properly, develop our potential and create our own version of 'amazing', we need to eat the broccoli that life serves up.
Okay, I'm off to investigate that cheesecake flavoured broccoli thing...
