Snack time is easily the happiest time in my house, especially when my wife isn’t there. My son knows that Dad will definitely hook him up with the cookies, candy, or any other low nutrition snack that is within arms reach. But not today! Today, out of fear of marital repercussions, I am Super Dad, and Super Dad takes things like nutrition, hygiene, and personal safety very seriously. So I quickly changed course and grabbed some peaches.
After my equilibrium and hearing recovered from the deafening screams and whining, I knew a quick pivot was in order. “But you like peaches, and besides, they’re just as good as cookies and candy. They’re Nature’s Candy!” As he slowly marched the Trail of Tears over to his little chair and sat down to eat his peaches, I sat across from him, basking in the glow of a total dick-wad, yet super dad-like parent move I just pulled off. After about the fifth spoon full of peaches that he bitterly stuffed into his mouth my mind shifted to an inconvenient truth that parents have been trying to hide for decades. Nature’s candy is the pits.
I mean, where the hell did that phrase even come from? I did some poking around and I couldn’t seem to find a definitive answer with leaves us with only two possibilities:
- It was blurted out by a stoner at a music festival while chowing down on some grapes after recovering from some bad acid.
- The secret name Woody Allen uses for his daughter/wife when he doesn’t think anyone is listening.
There is no other explanation that I can think of. As parents we probably shouldn’t use it anymore because it’s an outright lie, and last I checked, aren’t we trying to teach our kids not to do that? Yet here we are, promising them sweet candy and delivering piss-poor Craisins. And spare me the “those are good on salads” bullshit. Kids don’t eat salad, unless they are raised in a hippie commune, by people who own a Soup Plantation, or live in Portland.
I also started to get really worried about nature and its future. Here we are just pounding hatred of nature into our children by displaying how weak and not filled with chocolate and peanut butter its candies are. Their first memories of it are quickly turned into “that horrible thing with the shitty candy my parents forced me to eat when I wanted some damn Chips Ahoy!”, creating this image inside their head every time they hear the word nature:
PEACHES!!! I’LL SHOW YOU PEACHES YOU STUPID JERK DAD!!!
Now nature isn’t blameless here either. Step up and save yourself for god sakes. It might be time to start squeezing out some Butterfinger bushes or Hershey Kiss Kale ASAP, especially with President Crazy Pants taking away all the environmental funding and replacing it with free gold toilet coupons. The ability to pick wild Mini Baby Ruth’s would take camping to a whole new level of fun, which isn’t hard because camping sucks horribly right now. All muddy, smelly, with shitting in the bushes and leaf based toilet tissue. “I got an idea, let’s go live like disgusting savages for a weekend instead of staying at a hotel and eating room service. Wheeeee!!!” I would take a hard pass. But with free range candy as an option? Pass me a tent and a maple leaf, I am ready for action!
You would now have parents climbing over themselves to chaperone that horrible school trip to the pumpkin patch. In today’s nature’s candy world, it’s a disaster. Horrible hayrides, frowning parents, and overpriced gift shop chotskies would be replaced with laughter, smiles, and maybe even some light group skipping. No more walking around trying to find the orange gourd that looks the least like a 75-year-old mans one functional testicle and chucking them in a wheelbarrow, knowing full well they will either end up rotting on your porch or smashed to bits by the asshole teenager that lives down the street. Instead you can sit in the shade, eating freshly picked peanut butter cups and drinking tall glasses of cold milk.
Unfortunately, this is not the world we currently live in. People continue to lie to us that nature can naturally provide candy because “Fruit has sugar. Candy has sugar. Therefore, fruit is candy” By that logic, anything with sugar would be considered candy. I could take some dog turds and dip them in sugar and viola…candy. So I think it might be time for everyone to just get on the same page. If we insist on calling fruit Nature’s Candy, we should also add “but it isn’t very good candy. Not like this bag of gummy bears I am about to eat in front of you. These things are fantastic!” Kids will not hate nature, parents get to eat gummy bears in front of their kids, and when the chips are down, parental happiness is what really counts .
Share this:
Comments
Powered by Facebook Comments