You Can Tell When I Can't Tie It Together In The Title That These Stories Really Have Nothing To Do With Each Other

I went to the grocery store yesterday. We were a little low on food. Tyler says we're out of food when we don't have milk, cheese, or bread. I say we're out of food when I feed Talmage four M&Ms and a tortilla for breakfast. Which I did.

A typical trip to the store involves Talmage asking for 12 million things, ranging from Cars napkins to new sippy cups to bubble bath to, of course, treats, preferably gimicky treats that involve some kind of powder. He's pretty good at being told no when I remind him of our grocery store deal: he gets one treat per visit.

Yesterday my friend Hana offered to watch Talmage while I went to the store, and I chose to bypass the grocery store treat, an omission Talmage took issue with. "I WANNA TREAT" sounded loudly around my house this morning, and when I say loudly, I imagine my neighbors in Colorado heard the shrill echo. I offered him bananas, apples, and cheerios, all substitutions that were promptly rejected. Not that I'd imagine he'd go for it. I just get a strange thrill out of hearing him yell, "NO! NO APPLES!"

After roughly 20 minutes of this meltdown, Talmage exiled himself to Asher's room, where the abundance of toys soothed his tortured soul. Every five minutes or so, however, Tal would remember the injustice of the sugar Nazi, and would give a half-hearted "Wah, hah, hah." After which he'd forget his anger. This continued for another 15 minutes, until he emerged from the room and politely asked for a bowl of cereal.

This is the first time Tal ran to his room and slammed the door in anger. This is the tactic I most often employed as a child, a strategy I imagined caused my parents profound guilt and regret but, of course, just pleased them because I couldn't yell as loudly in my room. I imagined them standing on the other side of my door listening to my tortured cries and typically spelled out all the injustices my family had inflicted on me and vocally arrived at the inevitable consequence: I was going to run away. That'd show em. In fact, I even had three garbage bags full of stuffed animals packed and ready to go in case one of my siblings crossed the line and I needed to make a quick getaway on my pink banana-seat Huffy. I maintained this plan until one day I actually did run away and got all the way to 2700 E, about four blocks away from my house. Turns out three garbage bags are pretty hard to tote when you're chasing your childhood dreams.

But I didn't really have it that bad at my house. At least my mom never served me a single tortilla as a meal. Where I grew up you had your option of any one of 700 condiments. Bavarian sweet mustard, anyone? That's the breakfast of champions.