LOVE THURSDAY

My dad would come home from work every day around 4 when I was little. He'd set his work things down and then grab a cold pancake from the morning stack of pancakes, smear peanut butter on it and then eat it while walking back to his chair where he'd usually nap before dinner. My whole life I have gone through food phases. One month, I would eat nothing but a poached egg for breakfast. Every day. Poached egg. Sometimes it would be a month of oatmeal. Breakfast is my ritual. I have no recollection of what dad ate for a snack during poached egg season, but pancake season meant a left over stack of pancakes that dad would eat (cold) with peanut butter. This was the most disgusting thing to me. Every time he'd ask me to go smear some peanut butter on a cold pancake for him, I'd screw up my face and say "ew". Today I will gladly eat peanut butter on a hot pancake. I am still uncertain of cold pancakes. Dad would also pour molasses all over his biscuits (mom too). I'm pretty sure this is a Southern thing and one that never rubbed off onto their children. My dad introduced me to Vienna (Vv-eye-anna) sausages and potted meat. I will admit to eating these things with him. Of course, even if I were a meat eater, I wouldn't touch the stuff now. Oh the chemicals those little cans contain! He also introduced me to banana sandwiches. When I tell people about banana sandwiches, they scrunch up their faces and say "ew". White bread, mayo and bananas. That's it. I suppose it's the mayo that turns most people off. I come from a home where fruit salads where/are made with cool-whip or mayo. A banana sandwich with mayo is really just a fruit salad with bread, minus the maraschino cherries. I also put mayo on hot dogs. When Stephanie first heard of this she said "that's as bad as putting mayo on a baloney sandwich!". I did that too. Baloney is just a flattened hot dog any way. The mayo on sandwiches was not my concoction. This was learned behavior from Dad.

In the years before I got my drivers license, Dad would drive me to cello lessons in Tulsa. He'd always get us there too early. To kill time, we'd go to McDonald's and split an order of french fries. I know now that he got us there early on purpose. To this day whenever I eat McDonald's fries this is what I think of. I remember the two of us in the front seat eating french fries with my cello propped up carefully in the back seat. Dad would always eat the crunchy fries that I didn't care for. Come to think of it, Dad would always eat the thing off your plate that you didn't like. Janell burnt a whole batch of cookies once. Every single one came out of the oven looking like charcoal. The dog wouldn't even eat them, but Dad did.

These are some of the things I love about Dad.

Happy Love Thursday.