Sure, I used to eat my vegetables as a kid. Broccoli in particular provided so many of the vitamins that went into the excellent health I have done everything in my power to undermine since I moved out on my own. Lots and lots of broccoli, just as long as, mind you, it was covered in a counterproductive amount of molten cheese.

Did I say cheese? Nay, I meant cheez. Cheez Whiz to be precise, a foodstuff so tasty it couldn’t possibly, or legally, be spelled the same way as that thing that comes out of a cow and is left alone with some bacteria. Or is it mold? Or a fungus amongus? Whatever. It’s just as disgusting as whatever it is in that jar of orange that post-war science made for a great nation like ours.

I’m starting to wonder if there were other unyielding demands I made of my mother as she nourished me with home-cooked meals that a normal person would eat with abandon but that a child must modify in some obsessive-compulsive way to make it edible. If there were, I officially apologize, though I’m sure it’s too late to clear my karma. The dog has adopted the same behavior pattern: every now and then, she’ll go for days without eating, at most eating her breakfast from two days ago at dinnertime before spending another 36 to 48 hours in anorexic protest. I used to ignore this — “She’ll eat when she’s hungry,” I figured — but you start to worry, you know? So I thought maybe if I just spruced up her food a bit….

And now the bitch has me trained. These hunger strikes come more frequently now, because she knows all too well it won’t be long before I’m drizzling a little bacon fat or dropping some leftover spaghetti in the bowl to turn the Nasty Dry Crap into the chef’s special. It’s not even necessary to actually alter the food in any way: it’s just getting me to dote on her that’s her goal. Oh, I know, some might say that it’s the smell that goes along way, but tonight, the magic ingredient was, without exaggeration, a crumb of parmesan cheese from my fingertip about the size of a grain of pretzel salt. I don’t want to hear any suggestions that suddenly her Bowl of Crap became a magical Bowl of Cheezycrap, this was solely a result of the satisfaction of her pathological need to be in charge. She watched me cook my dinner, she knew that it smelled better than hers, and then she saw me walk over to her bowl and flick 15 micrograms of People Food into her kibble. “I am still Queen. I shall now eat.”

Oh, I am well trained.



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