Page 40 - You can't Make This Shit Up!

Touching
November 28, 2017
“I can’t even eat. The food keeps touching. I like military plates, I’m a military man, I want a military meal. I want my string beans to be quarantined! I like a little fortress around my mashed potatoes so the meatloaf doesn’t invade my mashed potatoes and cause mixing in my plate! I HATE IT when food touches! I’m a military man, you understand that? And don’t let your food touch either, please?” - Patrick Zevo from the movie Toys (1992)
I blame myself really. It is all my fault. Target has to take a little bit of the blame too. Damn Target and their brightly colored, inviting, trays that separated all my little people’s food.
It was fun at first. Grapes in one compartment. Crackers in another. Cheese cubed and set in the perfect square segment. A place for everything and everything in its place. Yes, it was all perfectly
separated. Nothing touched. Ketchup had its own home. To my oldest daughter, it was everything.
Babies become toddlers. Toddlers preschoolers, and so on and so on. My beautiful girl grew into an amazing woman. She is even letting me use her name in this blog. Mackenzie. Mac for short. My woman child. She is 22 and already one of the most accomplished human beings I have ever
known. Graduated from Northeastern University last May with a degree in health science, a minor in Biology, a year early, and on the deans list. Division one athlete all 4 years. Coxswain on the men’s varsity crew team. Also got her EMT license. Drove an ambulance in her “down time”. When she called last year to tell me “exciting news” I couldn’t even imagine.
“Mom, I have to tell you something” she said. Silence anticipation. “I had a sandwich today, and I now like tomatoes”. Ummm, ok. I said “Wow Mac, did you tell grandma?”. “No, not yet. I will call her when we hang up”.
This is BIG exciting news for my Mac. And just when I thought it couldn’t get MORE exciting, I got another call a few weeks later that...wait for it...she went to brunch and mixed the food on her plate.
You must understand that Mac is hilarious. She has no idea how funny she is which makes her even funnier. She was born without the gene that detects sarcasm (shocking since I clearly was born with an extra sarcasm gene). She is VERY literal, and that paired with her intelligence, and exuberance for EVERYTHING keeps me laughing most of the time.
When Mac was little I enrolled her in an edible art class. It was a bust because all she wanted to do is stand on the little step stool and wash her hands. While other kids were mixing trailmix together, Mac was sorting the raisins from biggest to littiest.
She loved the big box of crayola crayons. The one with the sharpener built into the back. Mac didn’t like to draw. She liked to peal the wrappers off the crayons. She then would rearrange the crayons back in the box by hues. She was about 3. That is my Mac. Everything clean and in its place.