Hoofnagle.org

So with my new eating habits (note, I did not call it a diet) I eat a fair amount of fruit. Morning snack is a banana and just enough peanut butter to make it taste like there's peanut butter on it. As I was finishing today's banana, I conscientiously did not eat the very end of it. Why, you ask? Because I have this vivid memory of my mother telling me at oh, about age 4 that if I ate the end of the banana there were amoebas that lived in the end that would make me sick. She got really graphic about what it would do to me. To this day, I don't eat the very last bite of the banana.

Was she teasing? Was she serious? Knowing my mother, she would never have said anything of that sort that she didn't believe. I imagine she did it casually, but in my mind it was this dire warning that death would befall me should I consume the last bite of banana. Amoebas were lurking in the banana plotting to do me great bodily harm. (An amoeba has microscopic teeth and claws when you're four, too you know.)

Since there's really no way I can prevent myself from saying SOME catastrophic thing to scar her little psyche, instead I look forward to warping Betsy in a similar way.

Posted by karen at June 24, 2003 12:00 AM