Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Slim Pickin's

Yesterday I took my children to Blockbuster with a coupon for a free rental. With the savings from the free rental plus about a buck, I let each one pick out a small snack. Back in the car, one child looked at the DVD box, one went back to reading Harry Potter 3 and the third, thinking he had nothing to read, began to annoy the rest of us. When told to stop that, he decided to read the back of the package of Slim Jims (a smoked meat snack) he had just purchased.

Every parent who has a child who has learned to read, has inevitably had to deal with a question such as, "What does this word that starts with an f mean?" when the new reader goes into a bathroom stall or public park and encounters graffiti. I had to deal with some equally (in my opinion) disturbing questions when my son read out the ingredients of his Slim Jims. Most notably, "What is mechanically separated chicken?" Once we theorized what that might mean, he asked "Why is the chicken in Slim Jims mechanically separated but not the beef? Does someone separate the cow by hand?" Needless to say, during the movie I ate some of my daughter's candy and did not partake of the Slim Jims.

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