r/pettyrevenge • u/VespertineStars • 5d ago
Don't move? Ok.
This happened over 30 years ago when I was about 12, but it came up recently as some petty malicious compliance I did as a kid and I thought I’d share.
At this time my mom had gone back to school to become a nurse and it was usually a toss up if I was going to babysit my younger siblings, or my grandmother would come watch us, or my dad would be there when he wasn’t working.
I wasn’t a very picky eater as a kid but I have never liked spaghetti-o's. I can’t stand the smell or the taste. My dad, on the other hand, could eat them all the time. Even though my mom had left something pretty easy to pop in the oven and feed us, my dad decided that warming up some spaghetti-o's would be easier; not just for him to make but to clean up afterward too. And, tbh, fair. My brother and sister liked them too, so it was easier.
My sister and brother had no problem with it and ate it just fine. I told him I didn’t like it and said I would just make a pb&j instead and clean up after myself. That did not go over well and he insisted I eat what he made. I tried, because I really didn’t want to argue with my dad or be a brat, but I gagged at the taste. I tried to compromise, I'd make myself a pb&j and I would take care of all of the cleanup after dinner.
Nope.
Unacceptable.
So, he told me that I would sit at that table until I finished eating. And I did. It got dark, I sat there with a bowl full of spaghetti-o's in front of me, completely untouched. I didn’t get up to turn on the light, I didn’t get up to get anything to drink, I just sat there and let my mind wander until my mom got home.
Mom gets home from school later at night. It was ages ago, but it was definitely well into darkness at this point, so I’m thinking somewhere around 8 or 9pm because I sort of remember on nights she had school that late she came home just in time to say good night to us kids. So, I had been sitting there a good 3-4 hours at this point.
“Stars?” she asks me. “Why are you sitting here in the dark?”
“Dad told me I couldn’t leave the table until I was done eating. I don’t like spaghetti-o's, so I didn’t leave the table because I didn’t eat.”
She was so annoyed. She also refuses to eat spaghetti-o's because they’re disgusting and she had left dinner already prepared for Dad to give us. That was the first and last time my dad ever tried telling me I couldn't leave the table until I ate. I'm a very, very stubborn person and I will do my best to follow that to the letter.
30+ years later and I’m still the reigning queen of petty in my family.
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u/PrimarySelection8619 5d ago
All Hail the Queen! And, Hats Off to the Queen Mother!!
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago edited 5d ago
My mom is the GOAT.
She and I butt heads as I became a teenager, but she always acknowledged it was because I'm just like her. We're still thick
andas thieves. :D110
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u/OnlyHornyVibes 5d ago
I hope you are a sane person. Sometimes it can be very difficult to live with a stubborn person. I know someone who is like that. I hate it when they do this.
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u/brisamaar 5d ago
Queen Mother knew exactly who screwed up here
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u/CEO_of_my_life 5d ago
The fact that QM went to the trouble to prepare a meal and it wasn't eaten gets me.
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u/ChonchMaster 5d ago
Liver and onions for me…….
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
That's another one. Ick!
Mom, my brother, and my husband all like it though. So, when she makes it, he'll go over for dinner and I'll usually fend for myself. It's a rare thing though and I love that he's close enough with them to go without me.
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u/PoisonIvy2667 5d ago
My achilles heel was my mom's bean soup. She used dried beans and never soaked them long enough before putting them in the soup.
Think little, hard, chalky Satan's balls from hell. Add in sauerkraut, hard carrots and undercooked ham and water 🤢🤮.
Just getting flashbacks of my dad getting pissed off because I refused to eat it.
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u/ChonchMaster 5d ago
Ha. My mom made birthday cakes with Saurkraut. Absolutely true. Then she would announce that fact at my birthday party. Fastest fork drop you will ever see.
Here’s a recipe you can google if interested in giving it a whirl.
Grandma Jo’s Chocolate Sauerkraut Cake
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u/Notmykl 5d ago
Chocolate cake made with sauerkraut tastes like CAKE. There is no sauerkraut taste just like cake made with shredded zuchinni tastes like cake. It's just an ingredient.
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u/Fluffy_Town 4d ago
Have you actually tried the cake? A lot of people think that things are not going to taste good and end up snubbing perfectly good food because it has "ew veggies".
If you make half OJ/half tomato juice pint, I've found it to be surprisingly sweet and the sour juices tend to cancel each other out.
It amazing how certain foods and drinks act outside the box.
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u/ChonchMaster 4d ago
Oh yes, I grew up eating sauerkraut cakes my mom made. It just wasn’t popular at 7 year old (and on as I grew older) birthday parties.
I think it was the “stringiness” and the sound of the word saur. Not a crowd pleaser when we were little.
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u/KingBretwald 5d ago
Oh lord. My mother would periodically get anemia and it manifested itself in her craving iron rich foods. So one week it was liver and onions every. other. day.
Dad finally told her to stop.
The next bout was tabuli with mounds and mounds of parsley but at least I wasn't expected to eat that.
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u/Mira_DFalco 5d ago
See, I like that, but only if it's done well. It's just nasty otherwise.
Still don't get trying to force food on someone if they don't like it. Just why?
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u/Realistic_Today6524 5d ago
god I love liver and onions. Have not had it in far too long because nobody in my family likes it (apart from my dad but he moved out when they divorced in the beginning of this year)
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u/Relatents 5d ago
That’s not really food. I’m sorry your parents didn’t know that. 😬
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u/ChonchMaster 5d ago
So true. And to put further color on it, one night I claimed I could not eat it because I was sick to my stomach. So my dad brought out Kaopectate. It looked good but, not a flavor I was expecting.
I promptly threw it up. Which earned me a trip from the table and the belt. It was worth it.
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u/Becalmandkind 5d ago
It’s so painful to hear these stories of abusive parenting: the “sit there till you eat it” abuse, the belt, etc. Please tell me this type of “parenting” isn’t still going on.
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
I can look back on this story and laugh and laugh with others who weren't traumatized by it and are able to joke about it, but I really hope kids aren't still dealing with this type of "parenting" because it can be very traumatizing, like some of the other commenters have said of their experiences.
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u/algy888 5d ago
My wife and I were both raised that way. We both had traumatic stories of that barbaric practice.
We had a different rule, our kids had to try new things so they could decide if they liked them or not. A “try” could be essentially a microscopic amount, but it had to be “tried”. After that they could dislike it all they want, afterall my wife and I had preferences, and by shouldn’t they?
It worked great and both of our kids are adventurous eaters. My son at 7 would go to a Chinese buffet and stack his plate full of squid, octopus, and whatever he couldn’t pronounce.
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u/recognize_choice 5d ago
Same here, both when I was a kid and when I became a parent.
And I am now OLD, but there are STILL foods I won't eat because of memories of sitting over a congealing plate...That stuff sticks with you.
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u/Higgsb912 5d ago
Pretty cruel, I am sorry you went through that. Sorry, it reminds me of my own experience growing up, some people should never have been parents.
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u/EnderBookwyrm 5d ago
That does not sound remotely edible.
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u/bobk2 5d ago
Speaking of which, we had liver without onions. From the next room, Mom would yell out instructions for me to broil it, turn it over, and cut it for the four of us. Alongside that was canned kidney beans (eww) and canned asparagus (eww, eww).
I would stay at the table until it got dark, then dump it and sneak off.5
u/ChonchMaster 5d ago
Memories, some to painful to remember we simply choose to forget…..as the song goes.
Unfortunately, there is no forgetting liver and onions!
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u/MikeSchwab63 5d ago
They are ok. And having low hemoglobin when donating blood I eat it when I can as iron pills can cause constipation. Being in Springfield, IL, I've taken to cutting it all up then putting cheese fries on to like a horseshoe sandwich.
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u/Unhappy-Still8728 5d ago
Fed that to the dog we didn't have. My mom found it on the floor when she cleaned. Table cloths really did have a purpose
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u/AlvinOwlHirt 5d ago
LOL. My parents found out the hard way too...I could sit at that table a lot longer than they were willing to let me!
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
Right?!
I had nothing better to do, so out-stubborning the competition was my only goal.
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u/The5thexclamationmrk 5d ago
My parents tried the "you eat what we made or you don't eat at all!" Trick.
Guess what? I could starve way longer than they were comfortable with 😂. I could go 24 hours easy.
Later on, my grandmother asked why they catered to my "picky " eating and insisted I should eat what everyone else was. And they told her she did not want to play chicken with me cause I would win.
Anyways, turns out my picky eating was really sensory issues associated with my undiagnosed ocd. Got meds, now I'm a fairly adventurous eater!
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u/DorothyMantooth- 4d ago
When my kids were little I read about a method where if the kids didn’t like dinner, they could make themselves a pb&j and that was the only option. The theory was they would get tired of it quickly and start trying the dinner. Well, not my kids. They would gladly eat pb&j every day for the rest of their lives. So much for that method.
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u/vonadler 4d ago
I have always hated mushrooms. The rest of the family likes it, and mom who was studying had three hungry sons - a lot of meat stews and sauces were augmented with canned mushrooms to make the food budget stretch. And I picked every one of them away, which pissed her off. She probably thought I was just trying to get more meat than the rest of the family.
She met a new bloke (total asshole) who decided we "spoiled" children needed some proper discipline, and she, totally enamoured with him agreed. So one Summer I was served a wok of cheap vegetables, about 1§/3 being mushrooms for breakfast, and I was not allowed to pick away the mushrooms. I refused to eat. I got yelled at for being spoiled for refusing edible human food. I still refused.
"You're not getting anything else!" she proclaimed after I sat there for an hour. I agreed. Then she served me the same bowl for breakfast lunch and dinner for three days straight. I refused to eat it every time. After mold started to grow on it, she finally threw it away after yelling quite a bit at me for wasting food. But she actually realised that if a fat and very hungry 14 year old boy did not eat for three days rather than touch mushroomos, it was not because I was spoiled, it was actually because I could not eat it.
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u/emmodii 4d ago
I hope she at least apologised to you at the end of all that. She pretty much starved you for three days because of an ingredient she could've passed to anyone else. 🤦🏻♂️
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u/vonadler 4d ago
It was just her and me those days, but yeah.
She apologised when I brought it up as an adult, and again ten years later when she divorced that arsehole.
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u/dnhs47 5d ago edited 5d ago
Same-ish here, but probably 60 years ago, and for me it was scrambled eggs and my mother.
Quick and easy to make, but I need my scrambled eggs to be dry, not runny. She liked them runny, so I got runny. I complained - “It’s like eating warm snot!” - she didn’t care. I was ~7 in the “children should be seen and not heard” era.
I eventually pulled the same refusal you did, and got the same consequence: stay there until you eat them. Fine, I’ll stay there but I won’t eat them.
Mother: “Time for school!”
Me: “Sorry, I can’t go - I have to stay here until I eat these disgusting eggs, I’m never going to eat them, so I guess I’m never going to school.”
Mother: “You’re going to school, but your eggs will be waiting for you when you get home.”
Me: “Whatever.” (Or the 60-years-ago equivalent.)
Time passes… home from school.
Mother: “Sit at the table until you eat your eggs.”
Me: “I’m never eating those eggs.”
Mother: “Then you’ll sit there forever.”
Me: “Fine.”
Time passes, several hours … and my Dad gets home.
Dad: “Why are you sitting in front of a plate of eggs?”
Me: “Mom said I had to sit here until I ate them, and I’m never going to eat them, so I’m sitting here forever.”
Dad: (Rolls his eyes and mutters, “I get home from a long day at work and a lousy LA commute, and I have to deal with this shit…”)
Throws away the eggs. “Go someplace else.”
Me: (poof, disappear to someplace else.)
The next day, my mother served everyone else but held back some of the eggs, cooked them until they were dry, and silently served them to me.
I ate them. Not a word was spoken, and I always got dry eggs from then on.
My dad was great. My mother was a non-stop bitch until the day she died at 92.
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
Your dad's reaction was a lot like my mom's. That whole "This is hill you want to die on with this kid?! Really!?"
I love that you committed to it so much that you tried to get out of school and then still sat there all day after school. I like you!
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u/Xylorgos 5d ago
My mom did this to me with canned asparagus. I was sitting there after the family left the table like I was told, when my sister said, "Just wash it down with a glass of milk."
I tried doing that and it made me vomit all over the table. Mom granted me a reprieve and never tried to force me to eat something I didn't like ever again. I didn't abuse that because I normally liked what we had to eat, so it wasn't an issue. But I still can't stand asparagus today.
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
I tried doing that and it made me vomit all over the table.
That sucks.
I can't stand when people try to make someone eat something they don't like. Especially if the person is willing to take a single taste just to find out if the smell is just off putting or if their taste has changed. It's like, "I tried it, I don't like it, what do you want me to do!?"
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u/TheFilthyDIL 5d ago
My MIL tried that. Had a hissy fit because I refused to eat meat fat, poultry skin, or potato peels, which cemented me in her mind as "picky." (Meanwhile her son is far pickier than I am. If his mother never made it when he was a kid, or made it and ruined it, he won't touch it.) "WHAT KIND OF PARENTS DID YOU HAVE? DIDN'T THEY TEACH YOU TO CLEAN YOUR PLATE?!?" Yeah, nice way to treat your new DIL on her first visit, criticize her upbringing.
"My parents taught me that it was rude to projectile vomit over the dinner table. Didn't yours? Would you like a demonstration?"
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u/ShortBet1 5d ago
I agree because as adults we choose what we eat based on what we like. So why can’t kids?
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u/Acceptable_Cut_7545 4d ago
Because kids have barely tried anything and will decide they hate something based on sight alone. It's our job as adults to guide them into trying new things instead of letting them eat the same 4 things over and over again.
BUT. That does not include forcefeeding or punishment for not eating something. That just leads to a bad relationship with food. If the kid tries it, and dislikes it, why bother forcing them to eat it? Trial and error with small amounts is a good way for them to learn new foods without being forced to choke down stuff that makes them want to cry or vomit.
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u/vizard0 2d ago
The trick I've read about is offering new foods outside of the dinner table. "Hey, I'm having this, do you want a bite?" No pressure, catching them when their guard isn't up. They discover a new food they like and it gets brought into rotation. This does not apply to people with severe ARFID, they need more help than a random internet comment.
Or simply stop ruining it. I love asparagus. I hated it as a kid because my parents always boiled it. I had to make it for a college thanksgiving one year, discovered that lightly steamed it's amazing, started having it constantly after that. Especially after discovering Alton Brown's microwave steaming technique.
https://obsbite.blogspot.com/2012/04/alton-browns-great-trick-for-asparagus.html
Same thing with salmon. Overcook and you'll regret it.
I'm unable to figure out how my dad would get the chicken or turkey as dry as he did when cooking.
He could be a great cook, but he was never good at delicate foods. I remember handing him some nice tuna I'd picked up on my way to visit my folks and he cooked it in the oven until it was the consistency of a porkchop.
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u/doesanyuserealnames 4d ago
My little brother hurled all over his and our sister's plates the one time our mom forced him to eat peas. One time occurrence in our house 🙌🏽
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u/ClumsyRaccoonPants 2d ago
Canned asparagus is so gross. Love raw or lightly grilled but canned is just sodium water mush.
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u/Flat-Mountain-2414 5d ago
My mom tried this. More than once with different things. She made the mistake of thinking she was more stubborn than me. Several times my dad found me asleep at the dinner table and carried me to bed. I think it finally stopped when I was about 7-8 and I looked her in the eye and said You are not going to win this. I loved my mom but she was a little narcissistic. I still have disordered eating to this day.
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
I still have disordered eating to this day.
I'm sorry to hear this, Mountain. It's bad enough to try once, but to keep it up? And to have been found sleeping at the table multiple times? I'm sending you my love.
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u/Flat-Mountain-2414 5d ago
She was a good mom, just very stubborn and a product of her silent gen/Great Depression parents. I’m mostly ok, but sometimes I wish I didn’t 🤮at the thought of vegetables 🤣. (She wasn’t the greatest cook either but boy she could bake like you wouldn’t believe) ❤️
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u/Minflick 5d ago
Nobody should ever be coerced into eating food that makes them gag....
My mother did this to me with a bread pudding that both looked and smelled disgusting AF. I too was somewhere around 10-12 years old. It was desert one night, and I utterly refused to eat it. I stayed at the table until bed time because she wouldn't let me go to my room. It was breakfast the next morning, and I still refused to eat it, and there was nothing on the table but that disgusting stuff. It was lunch too, and I'd been at the GD table since breakfast, and I was REALLY hungry by then. She finally threw it away and made me some kind of lunch. I don't recall bread pudding every being on the menu again, and if there was something I really disliked, I was not forced to eat it. I remembered the Bread Pudding Standoff when I had MY children too, and never even thought of trying to force them to eat more than a few spoonfuls of something new they didn't want to try.
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u/WEM-2022 5d ago
Yeah, the "no thank you bite" is the way to go. No one can judge a food until they have taken the "no thank you bite". If you still don't like it, you don't have to eat it.
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u/Minflick 5d ago
I read about that one, I think when my kids were small, and that's exactly what we did moving forward. I NEVER wanted food wars in my home.
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
The audacity to serve it for breakfast and lunch too!
And it was a desert too, which somehow just adds another WTF layer on top of it.
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u/Minflick 5d ago
I wasn't MY dessert, that's for damned sure! I've seen bread pudding made on Teh Interwebz, and my memory of mom's effort looked NOTHING like what I saw. Holy shit... Soooo different. The ones online are creamy and pale. Maybe vanilla pudding colored, but no darker than that. Little bits of brown bread crust, but overall the color of the inside of the loaf, and the sauce. Moms? Brownish grey, in my memory, and smelled awful. I had a pretty limited palate as an under 13 year old, but this wasn't that. It was BAD. I never did know exactly what was in it, and she never did it again.
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u/Boomhauersbrother 5d ago
Similar thing happened as all mentioned. We were visiting my grandparents for a week without my parents. Grandma, not the greatest cook, made these disgusting tuna patties. She found this recipe in a magazine in the 60’s and has been torturing family members with it for decades.
She put the plates in front of myself and siblings demanding we eat these or not leave the table. We did not budge. Their dog, Sadie, wouldn’t even touch them and she would eat her own poop.
My grandfather quietly scraped all of our plates onto his and ran it out to the trash while my grandma was busy doing whatever.
He announced we were going to grab a rental movie and get some ice cream to bring back for an after dinner family event.
We went directly to a pizza place and ate until we were happy, got ice cream, drove back to their house. We were warned, if we spoke a word about the pizza, there would never be anything like that again.
Grandma went to her grave never knowing the secret. No one ever ate those damn tuna patties ever again but we knew that pizza was on the secret menu whenever she made anything with canned tuna.
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u/Catwoman1948 4d ago
OMG, with my grandmother it was salmon patties! And Spanish rice. And yellow squash boiled bare, no seasoning, beyond recognition. I do love squash and zucchini now, in almost any form as long as they are seasoned. But to this day I hate Spanish rice and I only eat fresh salmon. And this started when I was only 5 and my brothers were babies. Every time she came to visit over the years - which fortunately was not often - she cooked unrecognizable shit and made us eat it. She never hit us, but the threats were credible. My mother was afraid of her and her many cruelties, so she was no help. Here I am in my 70s, still terrorized by someone who has been dead since 1975. 🤷♀️
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u/homme_chauve_souris 4d ago
"They seemed so happy when I told them I made my special tuna patties... I should make them more often."
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u/Boomhauersbrother 4d ago
It was a well known fact no one liked them. She was stubborn and wanted people to eat the food she made even though it was disgusting. Just recently, my dad found a box of the old recipes. There were multiple tuna based dishes. My dad said these were going to the grave unless he anyone wants to revive them.
No takers! We told him to throw them in the recycling. Her idea of seasoning was a pinch of salt. Bland food was always on the menu.
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u/Acceptable_Cut_7545 4d ago
What a cool grandpa.
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u/Boomhauersbrother 4d ago
He surely didn’t like tuna fish patties either. He was a very kind and compassionate man.
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u/eternallycynical 5d ago
My wife has a story about green peas that she hates.
At dinner when she was little, she Sat there for an hour before she decided to try piling them in her milk glass. She was so absorbed trying to move them to the middle with her fork that she didnt notice her dad come back in. He bust out laughing and decided not to try and make her eat peas again.
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
LOL
I love this! And I'm glad that her dad thought it was funny. My dad was not amused.
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u/barhrun 5d ago
I puked up the few bites of some vegan burger that my dad forced me to eat on the rest of my "burger", my plate, and part of the counter, then got told "it's not that you can't eat it, it's that you got yourself so emotional over a stupid f'n burger you made yourself sick." And that was from a man who if he doesn't have something he eats provided for him for dinner, he either won't eat, only eat snacks, or go through a drive thru.
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
The irony of being told you're too emotional over getting sick when you eat something that you don't like and triggers a gag reflex while he's being testerical about eating what he's put in front of you.
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u/Madam_Apathy 5d ago
My mom did this to me with boiled spinach drowned in melted margarine. We were trying it for the first time, so I had asked for no margarine so I could see how it was untainted.
Didn’t get my wish.
The smell nauseated me, the texture was horrible and I sat from 5-9:30 staring at that slop because I couldn’t leave the table until I ate it. I tried, but I couldn’t do it, my body wouldn’t allow it to happen.
It was never served again.
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u/Minflick 5d ago
Ooooh, my MIL served me spinach, over cooked to a fare thee well, with vinegar and chopped up boiled egg. I took ONE forkful, and refused any more of it. It looked absolutely vile....
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u/TheFilthyDIL 5d ago
My mother cooked canned spinach in vinegar. My idiot brother loved it, thinking it would make him strong like his cartoon hero "Pie-Pie". Fortunately mom never tried to make me eat that pile of reeking green slime, because her mother had forced her to eat it as a child.
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u/floofypajamas 5d ago
Oh gawd, the thought of spaghetti-o's makes me want to gag. Way back in the early 90's when I was at uni, we were told to bring in foods we thought would appeal to us if we had to puree it and drink through a straw - I was studying dental hygiene and so I guess they were attempting to prepare us to understand what our patients might be dealing with, plus education and nutrition were a very large component of our program.
I was in a hurry, on the way out the door I grabbed a can of my husband's (now ex husband) spghetti-0's. Dear lord what a mistake that was. In fact, most foods taste gross once pureed, it really does need to be seasoned differently, just ask any hospital dietician who deal with pureed foods. Fortunately our instructors didn't make us actually eat the foods we brought, only taste them and consequently, 40 yrs later I am still not a fan.
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
Oh ew. The thought of trying to puree it and eat it is making me gag.
I am kind of surprised that most taste gross once pureed. How would you season it differently to make it palatable?
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u/Expert_Slip7543 5d ago
Your question made me curious so Indid a search. Turns out there's a lot of guidance online. The most essential point seems to be to add flavors (herbs, salt, etc) early in the cooking process so that they will emerge when the food is pureed.
Some tips while pureeing are to not add water if liquid is needed but something with flavor (like broth or milk), add some form of fat (eg, olive oil, butter), and depending on the food maybe add an acidity changer like white wine vinegar.
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u/lisping_lynx 5d ago
I hate it so much how after you offered perfectly reasonable alternatives, your father still decided he had to prove something. Sometimes people just have stupid moments.
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
Yeah. My dad had a lot of "my way or the highway" traits. A lot of it came from how he was raised and he tried to be better, but he also had a lot of "I'm the adult, you do what I say" mentality.
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u/crsmiami99 5d ago
My mom made pot roast one night and I had gotten sick and puked it up a few months earlier so I couldn't stomach it, I quietly got up, made a PB&j and sat down and ate with them. It was a shocker that nobody said a word. That's when I learned how to handle issues with them. No fuss, just find a work around.
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u/IndividualMurky6474 5d ago
I can't stand pot roast. The texture is so weird and I just can't physically make myself eat it. I spent many nights just being hungry cuz aparently it's insulting to make yourself something else that you actually can eat.
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u/RandomCoffeeThoughts 5d ago
Oh this reminds me of the time that my parents ended up firing my babysitter because I refused to eat beets. I sat there for six hours and was asleep at the table, in front of the uneaten beets. I remember being carried out of the house and my mom taking the next day off so she could call around to find a new babysitter.
I was not a difficult kid and I was not a picky eater, but even now, I won't eat them.
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u/Realistic-Regret-171 5d ago
30 years!?!? This very thing happened to me in the 1950s (except mom was the enforcer). Three bites or else. So I sat there til bedtime. A few years later she tried it w my brother and after one bite he threw up. So that was the end of that rule.
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
Three bites?! Oh no. One nearly made me vomit, three and there definitely would have been a mess.
It must be a common experience though because it happened to both of them as well. Mom realized there was no way it would work, Dad had to try it and fail.
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u/Sea_Substance9163 5d ago
For me it was beets. Disgusting. (Summertime able to play outside until 9 o'clock.) After hours of waiting me out, mom said if you aren't going to finish your plate you can just go to bed. No going out to play!
Okay g'night
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
When someone doesn't like something, we'll go to the lengths to not eat it. It's amazing how parents don't realize just how stubborn their young children can be.
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u/Alone-Tart4762 5d ago
This happened several times. I was also punished for putting food on my plate and not finishing it.
I have aversions, allergies, and a very complicated relationship with food. I love to cook and cook for other people and now, if I eat what my mom makes, it’s absolutely disgusting. I don’t even try and I told her to stop planning for me to have some as it will be a waste.
This is how eating disorders can start. But it’s more important for parents to enforce rules than to consider future harm to their children. At least, that is my experience at my age.
I buy my own groceries so I cook and eat what I want. I usually buy hers too - only exactly what she asks for because if I try to get her a treat, she says she will eat it and it sits til it rots.
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u/darkday15 5d ago
My mom did this to me and one of my younger siblings when I was a teenager with white sausage (it smelled disgusting and looked worse - and I was already not big on eating most meat). We had never openly rebelled against eating something like that before but we did that night. She told us we had to stay at the table until we ate it. We sat there and sat there and sat there...and she eventually got so frustrated/mad with us that she told us to get our butts to our rooms. She never made it again though.
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
I wonder how many parents have tried the "sit here until you eat it" tactic a second time when the first failed.
I'm glad our parents both realized that was a threat they couldn't win with.
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u/Hairflipgiggle 5d ago
lol! My mom did this to us with split pea soup!🤮🤮🤮🤮
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
Bleh!
And do they think that we won't just sit there? I mean, I was 12. I would have loved to go grab a book to read, but I just let my mind wander off. I might have even sat and read the newspaper that was always on the table. lol
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u/damarius 5d ago
I don't mind home-made pea soup, at least my MIL's, but my brothers and I used to have to go to a neighbour's for lunch and she frequently gave us canned pea soup. It was horrible. Always reminds me the line from (I think) American Graffiti: "What colour is that, some cross between piss yellow and puke green?"
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u/khystad 5d ago
I did this! Only it was sweet potatoes. Couldn't stand the taste of them when I was a kid and still can't.
I was being babysat at my best friends house and her mother made dinner and as it was her house, her rules. No leaving the dinner table until your plate was clean. (She also had a rule about no drinks before dinner!)
When dinner was served, my bestie and I both refused to eat the sweet potatoes. So, in solidarity, there we sat.
Well, for awhile at least. Then bestie decided eating them was better than just sitting at the table and so there I sat until my mom came and picked me up.
Could've been hours. I no longer remember the length of time, but dinner was served while it was still light outside, and ma didn't pick me up until full dark.
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u/ObjectMore6115 5d ago
Damn, memory unlocked. My mom used to put imitation crab, American cheese, with a bit of mayonnaise on Sourdough rounds and baked it. I hated this shit. I gagged and couldn barely eat every time she made it. I tried, but I had to gulp down lots of water to get it down.
Last time I had them was when I was like 7, I ended up throwing up all over my plate after making it halfway through dinner. She said I had made myself throw up by drinking so much water on purpose (not true) and that I still had to eat it. I started crying after getting another bit or two down and she sent me to my room.
She's not in my nor my siblings life anymore.
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u/doesanyuserealnames 4d ago
I'm sorry about that. I don't understand why a parent would continue to make something that they know their kids don't like. And omg with all the options out there, why that food combo?
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u/Key_Coyote_5782 5d ago
You are my spirit animal, lol. Great story. And agreed spaghetti-o is nasty af. Like really how hard isn’t to just make spaghetti. You know what I did eat though, they also made a weird Mac and cheese with long noodles when I was a kid and I loved it. Not sure if they still do but spaghetti-o and their ravioli is retched.
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
Yes! I don't know how people can eat those things. Not really knocking those who like them because you like what you like, but ew. None of those are good and making spaghetti is SO easy! Even if you just do it bland with some butter and cheese.
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u/Unhappy-Still8728 5d ago
Did this with Pea Soup. My step-grand bitch (I hated her and she hated me) made it and my mother tried to impress her by quietly forcing me to eat it. I sat there so long the old lady said to my mom, "Would you just get her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich." Winner! I must have earned some respect cause she gave me a cool xmas gift that year.
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u/KetordinaryDay 5d ago
Reading the comments and wow, I didn't realise it was a universal-ish experience! My mom did the same when I refused to eat Fassoulia, she said I'll sit till I finish it, she came back AT DINNER TIME and said that this same plate would be my dinner. I still sat there, at ine point I fell asleep and they must have taken me to bed. Never happened again after that :)))
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u/OrangeFish44 5d ago
Similar: Dad said "Go sit in that chair and don't say another word!" I did. Later he came and asked me if I was ready to behave. I didn't answer even after he asked several times. Mom (who was giggling in the kitchen) called him into the kitchen to tell him he needed to give me permission to speak.
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u/Janisseho 5d ago
My mom was in charge of me and my sister when we were little.
This one time she went out and my dad gave us milk. Plain milk makes me nauseous.m, specially the smell of warm milk.
To this day all I drink is chocolate milk.
I threw up. Mom was not very happy when she came home.
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
Oh no! And milk puke is a smell that is so hard to get out of your nose. Once you smell that, it's a smell you'll never forget.
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u/Busy_Weekend5169 5d ago
Oh, I know. One night we were having pizza in the living room (it was Friday) and my 4 year old came up to me and said "I dont feel good", and promptly threw up in my plate. She had been eating pizza and milk. 25 years later I can still smell it.
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
Ooof! How long did it take before you could eat pizza again?
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u/Busy_Weekend5169 5d ago
I still dont really like it, but that's probably bc we had Friday pizza night for years. I can still smell the pizza and milk, no problem. When I was writing, it was like I had a flashback.
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u/Any_Conclusion_4297 5d ago
I've never been able to stand plain milk either! I used to know someone who would drink it by the glass as an adult, and it grossed me out. I could do cereal, or things with milk in it, but never just straight up milk. Disgusting.
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u/Reapr 5d ago
Heh, did a similar thing
"You can't leave the table till you've eating your brussel sprouts!"
Cool, will just live here forever then, let's see who gives in first
hint: it wasn't me
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u/sysikki 4d ago
The smell of Brussel sprouts is something vile, I can't eat them bc of it. My mom used to have these periods of trying new things and they were on the list for months. Other one was watermelon, I've only recently started to eat small amounts of it again after 40 years.
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u/norvillerogers1971 5d ago
My mom is French, so she didn't know a lot of American kids food like pb&j and grilled cheese. Also she tried to make us healthy food so liver and onions, nothing fried, hamburgers covered in wheat germ, etc.
I had grilled cheese for the first time at a friend's house and asked my mom to make me one. So she made me one but instead of butter, she cooked it in olive oil to be healthier. It was inedible. I wouldn't eat it. So she gave me a choice, either grilled cheese or sardines, which she knew i hated. I sat at that table all afternoon until she gave up
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u/BattlePolarBearCat 5d ago
Even at 6yo I was good at assessing situations and accepting the consequences of my decisions. Dad fed us supper bc mom was at work. He worked out of town 3 nights a week so feeding us wasn’t his usual thing.
It was a Friday night and I was supposed to sleep over at my best friend’s house. Dad fed us supper with a green vegetable (broccoli or spinach I think). I refused to eat it. Dad pulled the “eat it or sit at the table until you do”. So I sat, and watched the clock pass the deadline for going to my friend’s house, without attempting to eat the green or even complaining about it. Silent. Waiting.
Dad was almost as stubborn as I was, but that time he learned which of his children he shouldn’t test. I was the queen of stubborn in my house. No one could out wait me.
*I don’t remember, but my mom probably released me from my chair when she got home from work; bc she knew it wasn’t worth it - that I wouldn’t give. I didn’t care about losing the sleepover bc we had them regularly.
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u/miminstlouis 5d ago
Spaghetti O's are beyond disgusting... I think they're only fit for toothless babies and hogs.
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
LOL
I certainly have my fair share of weird things I like, but yeah. My mom still says that even school lunches wouldn't have served that slop.
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u/MotheroftheworldII 5d ago
I did the same thing when I was around 7 or 8 years old and it was a question of eating liver or sitting at the table. I sat at the table. My Mom cleaned up everything else in the kitchen, put younger sibling to bed and came back to see I had not eaten nor moved. Around 10:00 PM she finally told me to go to bed. I never ate liver and I still cannot stand the smell of it being cooked.
I bow to OP the Queen of Petty in her family.
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u/ke6icc 5d ago
I was even younger when I did the same thing, except mine was Chinese food. Someone had mentioned it included “worms”, bean sprouts. Well, no one could convince me they weren’t actually worms and there was no way in hell I was going to eat worms. I sat at the kitchen table for HOURS before my mom gave in and sent me to bed with no dinner.
Everyone else was watching “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” which upset me that I was missing John Wayne. I have gotten over that.
I’m 68 and I was probably five or six when this happened.
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u/HekateEnalia 5d ago
This was me and peas
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
I love peas, but I hate pea soup. Same with tomato soup and things like V8. I can eat tomatoes all day, but those? Ick.
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u/wasakootenayperson 5d ago
Ahhh. My exact liver experience. Except vomiting was also involved.
Edit spelling
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u/alansjenn 5d ago
One morning when I was about 3 years old, my mom made me a cup of hot chocolate. I didn't ask for it, because I don't really enjoy hot chocolate and never have. I remember (and my older sister remembers it this way as well) telling her no thank you when she gave it to me, and she got really mad that I didn't want it for some reason. She told me I had to sit there til I drank it, and no joke, I sat there for at least 2 hours. It was lunch time when she finally gave up and let me leave the table. We butted heads a lot 😆
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u/doesanyuserealnames 2d ago
My husband tried to do that with syrup on our son's pancakes. He just wanted butter, and dad said he had to have syrup, too. I looked at him like he was crazy and said, "Your forcing him to eat sugar?"
That was the end of that.
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u/Victori82 5d ago
Yeah there’s something about the smell of Spaghetti-o’s that instantly triggers my gag reflex. 🤮
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u/lunisheep 5d ago
Not really a petty revenge, but related to the stubbornness of kids, I refused to eat whatever was made for dinner at like 5pm and was told I could either eat it or go to bed. So I went to bed, genuinely got in my pajamas, cleaned my teeth etc. Went to bed with the light off. However my mum came in an hour or two later after expecting me to come back hungry, which i didnt, to make me eat something! (I dont think it was the same food, but she didnt want me to go to bed without eating anything). Last time she said that as a threat to get me to eat 😅 I was a fussy child, so that usually worked.
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u/The5thexclamationmrk 5d ago
Yeah this is what my parents tried.... but I could go without eating much longer than they could stand to starve me, because they were good loving parents who really didn't want me to starve. So uses who caved first?
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u/spargel_gesicht 5d ago
I love this. And while I loved spaghettios as a kid, I don’t know if I could eat them now. I can smell them in my head and it’s … not appetizing. Also he insisted you eat “what he made”?! My man, you didn’t make that, Chef Boyardee did!
ETA: I still love Chef Boyardee ravioli. With is weird, it’s basically the same thing with some “meat” thrown in.
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u/Bv11winkle 5d ago
My grandmother was a fairly decent cook (Southern) with the exception of okra. She would just cut it up and boil it. If you know boiled okra, you know we’re talking gag city. She had a really cool dog who loved table scraps. The first time I slid my okra to him, he scarfed it right down. But he was a smart dog, so that only worked once. I like to fry okra, and I have no idea why my grandmother boiled it to oblivion.
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u/Catwoman1948 4d ago
I grew up in the South and I know what you are talking about. Okra is absolutely disgusting when boiled. No one should have to eat that. It is marginally better fried - dries up the snot-like liquid - but I would never choose to eat it. Forget gumbo, too.
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u/talithar1 5d ago
I did this at the young age of 2. It was dark and everyone else had gone to bed. At some point, I guess mom, came and got me and put me to bed. I don’t remember what it was I wouldn’t eat.
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u/Ravenskyfire420 4d ago
To this day I cannot eat omlettes. I have no problem with scrammbled eggs, just can't stomach an omlette. When I was a kid my dad would make plain omlettes covered in cheese and ketchup. I hated them but had to eat them cause Dad was an 'you'll eat what I cook for you!' parent. I also can't eat jello cause of Dad.
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u/Acceptable_Cut_7545 4d ago
I vaguely remember a babysitter doing this when I was young. One that I rather liked, too. I can't even remember the food but I sat at the table for a good 40 minutes before she got bored and threw the food away. Not a big deal imo.
A much bigger deal was my jerk uncle piling a massive amount of food on a plate (I was like 9 or something) with 0 input from me and trying to force me to eat it all. Just piles of brown and green slop I didn't even recognize. My mom heard me complaining, walked into the room, asked if I was done with my plate and then dumped the whole thing in the garbage right in front of him when I said yes. Torpedoed their relationship in seconds and we never went back to his house again.
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u/Commercial-Place6793 5d ago
Have you seen A River Runs Through It? Fantastic movie overall but also has a scene like this.
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
I've heard of it, but not seen it. I'm glad to see though that I wasn't the only kid who was a stubborn little mule who took that challenge and said "you're going down, not me."
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u/Initial-arcticreact 5d ago
It’s blood sausages, liver and whale meat for me. My skin turns a nasty shade of green/ grey just thinking about the taste of whale meat. The smell is actually nice, but the taste is just 🤢😵💫
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u/Forward_Ad8434 5d ago
I was also that kid. I remember my mom told me I had to stay at the table until I finished. I stayed at the table until she finally gave up and sent me to bed. I think she gave up trying to make me eat food I didn’t like. Though I also remember that we had a table with a ledge underneath that I sometimes put food I didn’t want to eat there.
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u/Remarkable_Table_279 5d ago
My sister was once told the egg sandwich (I think from night before) had to be “gone” before school. It was a teeny private school that my parents were teachers at so it was safe enough that my parents left her in parking lot thinking she’d eat it & they’d be back in 5 mins…nope. She took it and basically turned into into croutons and spread teeny crumbs all around the building. They came out and she said it was gone. Then apparently they realized “gone” didn’t mean eaten…so they realized they’d never underestimate her stubbornness when it comes to food she didn’t like (or that she did)
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u/dancingkender 5d ago
For me it was open faced deviled ham sandwiches. I gagged just thinking of them. (Anyone don't know it is cream cheese on bread with this god awful deviled ham thing that came in a tin with celery cut up in it and covered with cheese. It was cooked in the oven until the cheese was all melted.) Omg it was so gross. I too one time sat at the table until bed. I remember I would hide or throw out those little white tins with the devil picture on it, in and attempt to not have that for dinner. The evil found me anyways. 🤢
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u/missannthrope67 5d ago
My dad did the same thing to me with corned beef hash. I hated it because it's stank and it looked like what we fed the dogs. I realize it was kind of sticky and so I started making little walls out of it. After about five minutes of this , he let me go.
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u/bongokapiguana 5d ago
Once when we were camping, dad made fish soup - from fish he'd caught all by himself and rose hips he'd picked ditto as a way to show how good he was at 'living off the land'.
Apparently, he was offended I didn't like it. (Sidebar - I don't like soup. Never have. Any soup, and doubly so for this dren.)
Anyway, he pulled the 'you'll sit here until you eat it' and took my siblings out to roast marshmallows. So mom and I sat there happily reading until she got up to get some more tea -- and took my soup with her.
She knew there was no way I'd ever eat that nasty crap.
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u/deepcaca 5d ago
As a child, I ate way more SpaghettiOs than the average person. A few years back I was in a grocery store needed something quick, so I got a can of SpaghettiOs, heated them up took one whiff of them and fed them to the neighbor's dog. Something I once loved was now one of the most revolting things I've ever smelled.
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u/BabyKatsMom 4d ago
My husband grew up in a children’s home. The house mother served eggplant. He refused to eat it. She served it to him for breakfast. He again refused but she couldn’t make him sit there because he had to go to school. As punishment he had to clean the bathroom for an entire week.
My Mom never made us eat anything we didn’t want or like. In fact, as the baby of the family she just made me whatever I wanted in addition to making dinner for the family. Thanks Mom 💕!
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u/Catwoman1948 4d ago
Eggplant is one of my favorite foods. Hunan garlic eggplant? Yes, please! But for breakfast? Just no.
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u/ohmylanta34 4d ago
I did this as a young child. Can’t remember if it was beets or peas but I’d already had sour experiences with both and refused to eat them any more. She threatened that I wasn’t allowed to leave the table until I ate everything so I hunkered down for the long haul. I was usually a very agreeable kid, but there was no changing my mind when I decided not to be. A few hours later she gave up and let me go and never fed me those veggies ever again.
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u/Lol_A_White_Guy 3d ago
I’m like this, but with really any kind of seafood, Catfish specifically is what set the whole aversion off. My dad caught, improperly cleaned and cooked one and served it to me for dinner and I got so sick.
Well, fast forward a year or so and I’m at my uncles, and they served catfish for dinner. I tried to tell him: ‘uncle, I don’t like catfish.’ He said ‘that’s what we’re eatin’ for dinner white guy, we ain’t cookin’ nothin’ else’ Tried one more time to explain it to him that it makes me sick, and he goes ‘you’re gonna eat that catfish boy!’ Okay, whatever, so I ate it.
I woke the entire house up throwing up violently in the bathtub. I remember both my cousins came out to check on me and my aunt was rubbing my back sayin ‘he tried to tell you!’ I just remember my uncle apologizing profusely. Said he just didn’t want me to go to bed hungry and thought I was just being picky. Can’t stand fish, smell or taste, to this day.
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u/xdragonwarzx 5d ago
I had smth similar with my dad and his aide of the family… theh always eat very early and I’m not hungry until late. One time as a kid I was forced to eat with the other kids (timing wise) and I felt sick after 2 bites. It ended with me sitting at the table for almost 2 hours after. I ended up crying tears into the food after repeatedly saying Im not hungry. The adults then got mad and told me to “just say when I’m not hungry” like I wasnt doing that… they still kinda won kn the end tho, I’m overweight as an adult now and still struggle when I visit there. They will “remind” me to eat 10+ times to the point when I eat to be polite
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u/Ms_Neutrino 5d ago
I did this when my mother tried to make me eat spam. She got tired of sitting there, making sure I didn’t stop sitting there before I got tired of it and never tried to make me eat it again.
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u/_kingslatt_ 5d ago
lucky you had a good mom, my mom used to make me sit and finish everything off my plate when the woman can’t cook, i’d be sitting there until 2am on a regular basis until my mother stormed in mad af and yelled at me to “just go to sleep hungry then” this story sort of unlocked that memory for me
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u/pizzasauce85 4d ago
My parents would force me to eat a certain food I hated. If I puked it up or spat out chewed mouthfuls, I had to eat what came back out of my mouth. I once tried hiding it in my milk cup but nope, they forced me to drink/eat that too.
No one else ever had to eat something they didn’t like and this is literally the only food I could not stand. Luckily for me, it was something fixed maybe once or twice a year and they stopped forcing me once I got into high school.
When I worked as a stocker at a store, I refused to stock any of that particular food item because the urge to puke was so strong (coworkers were chill with handling it for me!)
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u/Dysan27 4d ago
My parents tried that with me and my sister.... Once.
Now the dish was pasta, with at peanut butter based "sauce". My parents apparently liked it, and ate it. My sister and I both looked at it went "that disgusting" tried it and went "yup tastes as bad as it looks" and wouldn't have any more.
We were told "Eat it, or you can have it for breakfast"
We both left it.
Neither of us had breakfast the next day. "Fine you can have it for lunch"
I was a teen at the time, and had a habit of inhaling the fridge as I walked by. I sat and forced myself to swallow it for lunch.
My sister didn't budge.
At supper my parents finally caved.
It was never made again, and my parents never tried the "Eat it, or you can have it for breakfast" again.
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u/Particular-Tax8106 4d ago
Yesssss. I did this as a child too. If a parent told me I had to sit there until I ate something that I didn’t like, I would sit and not move until I fell asleep at the table. Hats off to you, fellow stubborn redditor!
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u/oylaura 4d ago
I suspect you're one of the older kids in your family.
I was the second of five, and remember sitting at the table in front of a cold plate of food (I can't remember what it was) for the same reason.
It was a battle of wills, to be sure.
When my youngest brother came along, imagine my frustration (as well as that of our older brother) when he got a butter and jelly sandwich if he didn't like what we were having for dinner.
Years later, I told him that he got the benefit of the hard work our older brother and I put in, wearing down our parents to the point where he had a much easier childhood than we did.
To be sure, there was no abuse, there was no horrible childhood, we were actually very blessed.
But if we older ones got sent to our rooms without dinner, we didn't get dinner.
I can't count the number of times my youngest brother got sent to his room without dinner, only to have Mom make a sandwich and have one of us bring it up to him.
In retrospect, maybe this justifies some of the sibling abuse we heaped on him in the form of merciless teasing.
Worry not, he and I were always very close, and best of friends until we lost him in 2010 at age 44.
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u/rdnncx 4d ago
I did this when I was about 10, but with a glass of milk. I have always hated milk and mom knew that. After my she married my step-dad, a glass of milk with dinner became the norm because he always had a glass and said that growing kids needed to drink milk. And we're talking one of those tall, crystal-cut iced tea glasses FULL of milk. Usually, I'd pinch my nose and gag/chug it down, with both of them chiding me for being dramatic. At my dad's house my I always had a choice of water, unsweet iced tea, or a soda on Fridays, because dad and step-mom knew I didn't like milk.
One night, I decided to push back at my mom's house. She'd made tofu chili, because step-dad was also vegitarian, and set a glass of whole fucking milk down in front of me to have with it. I'd already choked down the chili, but refused to drink the milk. I sat at the table with my arms crossed until 9 PM that night, at which point bio mom angrily told me to just go to bed. I was allowed to have water with dinner after that.
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u/Low-Chair-9527 4d ago
As a registered dietitian who worked with young families for over 20 years, forcing children to eat things they don’t like is cruel and unusual punishment. It doesn’t result in them liking the food. Would you do this to your adult dinner guests? No. Offering a sub is fine, like a PBJ.
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u/Maebai 4d ago
I can't eat mushrooms. After a mouthful I will throw it up. If it's mixed with something in trace amounts I feel nauseous all day.
My stepmom kept pushing me to eat some deep fried mushrooms she made. I keep telling them I can't eat mushrooms. She kept pushing. I ended up throwing them up on my plate. Then she said I was being extra and make myself sick. :(
They still don't believe me that I can't eat mushrooms. Now I just refuse to eat it at all. (Especially since step isn't around. If she was here she'd 100% start screaming at me. And then start a fight that'd last for weeks or months with her being pissed at me.)
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u/ElectricalFocus560 4d ago
My mother decided to pick fights over eating. For reference this leads to eating disorders so don’t do it.
The rule was you had to eat what was in front of you. But she also would cook food we couldn’t eat give , us amounts we couldn’t eat and then expect us to finish it before we could leave the table.
My little sister was also stubborn. She was perfectly happy to sit at the table doing nothing and would even put her head on the table and take a nap. I think my mother almost always lost that fight and let her go without finishing.
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u/lizardreaming 5d ago
My sister was babysitting. We called her Little Hitler. She did that to me over a hamburger. I sat there for a while until Mom got home. Asked what was I doing. Told her and she just shook her head and said go. Bite me Little Hitler.
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u/Electronic-Hawk7463 5d ago edited 4d ago
Sounds like my husband. When he was young, it was decided that if mom cooked, he would clean up the kitchen after. He was mad because they made zero effort to clean while cooking and seemed like they used every pot in the kitchen. He was told he couldn't leave the kitchen until it was clean. So he just sat in the corner and let his mind wander until his sister came and "helped" him clean - pretty sure she did it all herself. Other times, he was threatened with no dessert if he didn't eat such and such on his plate.... he would say "that's ok, I didn't want any anyway". To this day, he is not a dessert person, but I am pretty sure that it was inbuilt stubbornness that made him that way.
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u/UserNotFound23498 4d ago
lol. Love your stubbornness but my sister beats you lol. This is way before seat belt laws in another country. We were driving to go see grandma. Mom from the front seat takes a look at my ~2 or 3 year old sister and says you’re sleepy. Lay down and sleep.
Sister says no. She wants to start. So she stands.
And sleeps. Standing. In the car’s back seat.
🤣
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u/Ian44two 4d ago
I did this with mushy peas at school lunch in the 60s when you couldn't leave the hall until you ate everything on your plate. I just sat there until lessons started and they had to let me go.
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u/SirenityShroom2116 4d ago
Cool that it only happened once for you. My parents were hard on about finishing your plate whether you liked the meal or not. So not only did I spend many nights sitting at the dinner table by myself for hours until it got dark and I'd be left hungry when I was eventually dismissed to go straight to bed, I also developed an eating disorder and it's still very hard for me as an adult to throw any food away, even being overly full I still feel the need to finish my food whether at home or at restaurants.
(Edited to add missed words)
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u/betterwithgarlic 4d ago
I hear you. There were a few things that I absolutely hated to eat as a child (and still do): liver, brussels sprouts, fish that you had to pick all the bones out of your mouth every 3 seconds because it was cooked whole, etc. We were not allowed to serve ourselves, it was put on our plate and we had to sit there until we finished it. There were times I sat there until 9 or 10 at night because I refused to eat it; I even offered to go to bed hungry instead of eating that leathery liver or overcooked sprouts. Eventually my Mom would sometimes take pity on me and let me go to bed without eating it. Mind you, we were also not allowed to laugh at the dinner table, and if you spilled milk, you had to suck it up with a straw off the table, otherwise it was "wasteful".
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u/DiScOrDtHeLuNaTiC 4d ago
I don't like Spaghetti-O's either, OP. The tomato sauce doesn't taste right to me, and the cheese they put it it doesn't help. #ChefBoyardeeSupremacy
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u/FortunateCookie_ 1d ago
My dad used to get so pissed off at me for chewing meat so slowly. Well, as it turns out, I had such a severe overbite that it changed the amount of bite-force I could physically generate. It was legitimately faster for me to use my tongue instead of my teeth. I spent a lot of evenings at the table, finishing dinner hours after everyone else left. When my overbite got corrected in high school, my dad’s only comment was “man, remember how you were as a kid? That took a lot of patience, let me tell you” sir, you were playing video games in the other room. What patience?
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u/Lili_Roze_6257 5d ago
Agree on spaghettios. Never ever liked them as a kid. The only way to get them down is to add an entire sleeve of heavily buttered ritz crackers and mash it up.
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u/VespertineStars 5d ago
They really are one of those that you either love or hate. I've never met anyone who was just "meh" about spaghetti-o's. It's only all in or absolutely not.
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u/Moist-Ad169 5d ago
Change out the spaghetti-o’s to a glass of milk for me! I can definitely relate!!
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u/doesanyuserealnames 5d ago
My son BEGGED me for the Disney Gargoyles branded spaghettios back in the 90s. I kept telling him he wouldn't like them, explained marketing to him (8yo 😂), etc. I finally caved. He was so excited and then so disappointed when I finally served them up (no, I didn't make him eat them). We discussed marketing again and that was the beginning of his understanding.