Thursday, November 4, 2010

Mama Bean is fantastically horrible at sharing

Papa Bean says I should have failed kindergarten. I blame being the youngest, and being spoiled, and being a princess. He's the oldest, he learned to share from 20 months of age, and never stopped. He is the perfect person for selfish little me to be married to, not because he's taught me to share better, only because he's already good at putting up with it. haha.

Actually I think he has made me a better sharer.

Is that a word?

Here's a Halloween story about how good at sharing I am. We didn't give out candy this year, because we've had so few kids the past few years, it just didn't seem worth it. But we did buy candy - the next day, half price :) That's just how we roll. I bought 125 pieces of Hershey's candy (Reese's PB cups, O'Henry, and Reese's Pieces) 125 pieces of Cadbury candy (Wunderbar, Caramilk, Crunchie, and Crispy Crunch) and a dozen minipacks of Swedish berries. I'd been craving them. (Oooh, and we got an extra two packs!) Then I came home and dumped the candy into a bucket, and divided it equally into two boxes. As in, one caramilk for you, one caramilk for me, one o'henry for you, one o'henry for me, etc. So that each of us got exactly the same number of each chocolate bar. Because I am the best sharer in. the. world.

That's sharing, right? LOL.
But it's really just the best solution for us, because otherwise everything gets messed up. I eat candy slow - by the time I finish one peanut butter cup, PB's had six. I eat Reese's Pieces one at a time, PB a package at a time. I mean, we've got to add in to the general complexity of this issue my particular food neuroticals. I eat chips from biggest to smallest, saving extra flavour-covered ones for last. If we've got one bowl of chips, PB's utterly indiscriminate eating pattern totally interrupts my totally reasonable and not-at-all-crazy method! I eat m&m's in colour order, yes, I know, they aren't flavoured, they all taste the same. And yet. Brown first, then green, then yellow, then orange, then red and blue. That's just The Way It Is.

We have to get two bags of popcorn at the movies (when we splurge for popcorn, i.e. when we don't buy two tubes of Pringles at Wal-mart on our way to the theatre.)

I'm bad at sharing. PB is a saint.

He has a joke that sharing was part of my vows. It was part of saying "I do." Apparently, what I really said was, "I do will share." Which doesn't make any grammatical sense to anyone that isn't married to one of us. Of course, this has expanded into all sorts of nonsensical phrases, like "I do will clean the bathroom for my pregnant and/or generally lazy wife" or "I do will wash the dishes with a cheerful heart" or "I do will never tickle me again upon threat of castration." These supposedly implied vows don't always come true (though we're doing well on the bathroom one heehee) but they are fun to say. I say "I do will share" all the time... but that doesn't mean I actually share.

I'm just a little pre-occupied with fairness. I want my fair share. Maybe a consequence of growing up with two ravenous teen-aged older brothers? Maybe a consequence of just expecting to always get what I want? This is the problem with my Not Sharing, after all; what I really want is special treatment. I want maybe a little more than my fair share. And I'm only gonna get that if everyone else for sure only gets exactly theirs. Did that make sense? It does in my head...

I think PB will agree I have changed (for the better!) since becoming a mom. I will share with at least one person, without hesitation, and that lucky little bastard is Bean, of course! If PB and I are both sitting with identical bowls of food, Bean will crawl to me with wide eyes and open mouth first, because he knows the odds are good. The odds are very, very good. Though all this sharing hasn't seemed to make a difference to my waistline yet... (I kid, I kid. I'm pregnant, my waistline doesn't exist anymore. It may never exist again, frankly. /sigh.)

So, let's just hope with the arrival of one more child, all my neuroticness will break down and I'll turn into an angle of selflessness :) Or, maybe we'll just be this weird family that buys four bags of popcorn at the movies... and handles the Halloween candy very, very carefully.

(Let's not even discuss how we deal with bed blankets...)

1 comment:

  1. So funny!! Speaking of your odd habits for eating things. I will never forget the first time I watched you eat a McDonalds Burger. ;)

    At least the halloween candy was still divided one for you one for PB.... It could after all be argued you are eating for two. See, you have come farther than you think! :D

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