For the Love of Goldfish

Today was a very important day. What made this day so important was not the fact that my little baby has been secretly practicing standing unsupported. It was that Jackson had his first goldfish crackers. He seemed to enjoy their crunchy goodness as we sat smiling at each other and giggling.

Goldfish and I go way back. In high school my dad used to buy the one gallon size boxes of goldfish and I had a serious addiction to the tiny, cheesy, crispy little things. I did most of my goldfish damage during Oprah. Then one day I realized how small one serving of goldfish was compared to how much I would actually eat. I mean, I could put that much away during one commercial break! I was horrified imagining how many fat grams and calories I'd regularly consumed. That ended my goldfish dependency. So I asked Dad to stop buying the goldfish. "I really need them not to be in the house," I explained.

When I went off to college and would come home for a weekend or a holiday, Dad would rush off to the grocery store. He always returned with a great assortment of good food. Melissa and I definitely preferred dad's grocery choices to mom's. She had a tendency in those days to buy a lot of Snackwell's and other fat free food that is so fake and chemically bizarre that you are probably better off eating the real deal. That's my theory anyway. So Dad would call out my name and I could hear him shaking a box of something. You guessed it...goldfish. He delighted, absolutely delighted, to get me the very thing he knew I could not resist. He'd say, "It's the law in my members making me do the thing I shouldn't do!" To this day, every time I'm home I find a fresh bag of goldfish crackers in the pantry.

Now if I ever buy goldfish I try to get the box of small, individual bags to prevent overeating. I found a small bag deep in the back of my pantry today and it was my delight, my absolute delight, to share them with my son. And we ate them watching Oprah.

My daddy, aka Pabby, making breakfast for everyone on Christmas morning