“There’s nothing to eat.” My kids say this all the time. Do your kids? It may be the most common phrase uttered under our roof.
“There’s nothing to eat” is said at various intervals throughout the day. It’s most often said the day after we’ve just spent an hour the previous evening at a grocery store maxing out our credit cards and stocking our entire house full of groceries. It’s said two hours after we’ve gone out to eat and have leftovers. It’s said in the morning before school. It’s said in the evening right after school.
“There’s nothing to eat” is said at bedtime when my spawns are still hungry and are trying to trick me into turning them into Gremlins. I saw that movie guys. That was my generation. I briefly had a dog named Gizmo, a beagle, that disappeared one night. Vanished.
I still have questions.
Then my grandfather was given a dog by my cousin Susan and named him Gizmo in his honor because he’d built my dog a doghouse with a Gizmo nameplate on the front.
His Gizmo was not a beagle. It was supposedly a pure bred Blue Heeler, if I recall correctly. But it grew into a massive animal, which very much appeared to have DNA from a German Shepherd on steroids, and no longer could fit inside the dog house. And that dog never barked at my grandpa, “There’s nothing to eat.” He was one well fed machine.
Digression aside, you can’t trick me.
What “There’s Nothing to Eat” really means (in kidspeak)
The technology on my smartphone isn’t yet equipped to handle this type of verbatim translation yet. But as a parent, I have worked tirelessly, tooth and nail, to decipher the secret code in my children’s statements. I found the lost city of Atlantis in the process. I also came up with this.
10 translations for There’s Nothing to Eat:
- There are healthy food options in our refrigerator and cabinets, but I don’t want to eat healthy right now.
- I have a million and one options to choose from. What’s lacking is the exact one I want right this minute.
- I want Dominoes pizza.
- I want potato chips.
- I want sugar and natural sugar from real fruit won’t cut it. I want Airheads.
- I want ice cream.
- I want a sandwich, but only made with Nutella.
- I just want Nutella.
- I’m okay with ham and cheese, but I don’t want to make it on bread. I’d like it presented to me in a plastic box with a plastic covering I peel back. In other words, I want a Lunchable.
- I’m not actually hungry at all. I just want to complain and spread a mood of negativity to all those around me. Feel my wrath.
Have you ever made your own list of what “There’s Nothing to Eat” means?
What’s on it?
What am I missing?
And what ever happened to a simple cheese and mustard sandwich on white? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich? A peanut butter and banana sandwich — if you want to get fancy?
Eat a piece of cheese. Grab a handful of almonds. Drink a glass of milk. Go crazy and add Hershey’s chocolate syrup to it. Drink two glasses. Open the drawer, grab a spoon, and eat peanut butter straight out the container. I don’t even care at this point.
Something.
Damn.
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