The Ghandi of Breakfast

I know there is such a thing as a hunger strike, but the concept boggles the mind: an adult of otherwise sound mind deciding not to eat food in order to get what he or she wants? Things must be pretty freaking bad if not eating is the only way to make them better. Yet judging by my kids’ daily effort, I must be running a Siberian Gulag.

It starts with Archie, the Ghandi of Breakfast. He’s prepared for his difficult challenge by bringing along an illustrated Hansel and Gretel to distract his mind from food. I could not make this up; The book he has at the table to use as a wedge between his face and the food is a fairy tale about starving kids.

“Archie, that book is distracting you from eating. It’s got to go.”

“No, it’s not. I promise it’s not.”

“Take a bite.”

“I think I want to sit more next to you.”

“Here. Now take a bite.”

“Oh, look, daddy. Hansel is doing something we can’t do. He’s on the roof of his house!”

I don’t yet know what his demands are, probably to reconcile the warring factions of plush and hard-plastic animals that have staked claims on opposite ends of his bed.

Meanwhile Augie picks at the top of the toast to pull off the jelly and eat it. He’s fairly successful, getting the blueberry remnant bits off the surface and leaving only a thin, pale layer. He won’t eat the toast, though. Why? There’s still jelly on there. “Sticky” he says, and he’s got the jam in his hair, making a kind of Ed Grimley/Something About Mary spike. He tries to knock the food away when I try to feed him a bite. His cause in this hunger strike remains known only to him, or perhaps to other toddlers somewhere, his allies. I give up on Archie and go to the mat with Augie. It’s down to a standoff.

“Your want to get down? Eat one bite.” I give the signs for eat and down. He understands, I’m certain, event though he turns down his lip and holds that face. He’s stubborn. He cries. He grabs the bread and smashes it through his fingers.

Archie says, “I think Augie wants his toast to take a bite of him so his toast can get down.”

Archie and I try to break him, chanting “Augie eat, Augie eat!” pounding on the table. We’re like Cazale and Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon, chanting “Attica, Attica!” He stares, listens, wonders. Whole NPR segments of time go by. Finally as I go to type this line, he takes a small nibble. We cheer. Archie is ecstatic and considers for a moment breaking his own hunger strike.  Augie finishes the whole piece in a minute, as I thought he would. I win, I win. The causes of social justice lose the day, as I comfort myself that I’ve preserved the status quo and have only two more meals to go until I can lock their cell door for the night.

“Now do that to me, daddy,” Archie says.