Vegetable Soup

He was probably 6 years old at the time, and had a neighborhood friend over for the evening. They had been watching the movie “Alligator” on television, probably not terribly appropriate for 6 year olds but they enjoyed it.

They were called to dinner and it was vegetable soup…..He had never liked vegetable soup, couldn’t bring himself to eat it ever. He also didn’t recall that it had even been served as a meal before in his home.

Most of the dinner was spent pushing around the veggies in the bowl and not daring to say anything or look up. His friend finished his, asked to be excused and went back to his bedroom to continue watching Alligator.

He doesn’t really recall his mother being there although surely she had to be, or maybe she had gone off to do the dishes or other house chores. Leaving him there with his Father at the table.

“You know you aren’t getting up from this table until you eat that”
“I can’t, it taste yucky and it’s making me sick”
“You’re going to eat that or you’re never getting up from this table”

He made several attempts to eat some but each time ended up gagging; probably more so from the fear of what might happen if he couldn’t eat it than the actual taste of the food.

His father grew more agitated and loud as this continued, he began yelling shortly after.

“I work hard to put good food on this table and you WILL EAT IT!”

Sobbing by now but still at least making an attempt to eat the soup it was no good. Finally working Himself up to the point where he finally actually got sick into the bowl of soup.

“You don’t think that’s going to get you out of it do you! Eat your damn soup!”

He doesn’t remember much after that all too clearly only that he did make a few more tries to actually eat the soup but all resulted the same. Finally his Mother came and excused him from the table and sent him to his room.

His friend didn’t seem to have noticed or heard what had happened, which was actually a blessing. Thankfully nothing else happened as a result of that night’s dinner which also made it easier, could have been from having a friend over but hard to tell. Less to explain that way, and the rest of the evening passed uneventfully.