Nate is undeniably edible. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but people look at him and they just want to eat him up. When he was little, I thought it was probably his blond cherubic curls and those little bee-stung lips. Or maybe that chubby belly sticking out over the waistband of his diaper. But even now, his curls are gone and his little tummy has flattened out and he is still just as yummy as ever.
He has spent much of his childhood exclaiming, “No eat me!” in countless situations and settings. I’m sure it’s unsettling to always be on high alert as some sort of blond-haired, amber-eyed appetizer. I do distinctly remember one time when he was two, he laid flat on his back on the kitchen floor, pulled-up his little shirt and giggled, “Eat my belly.” My three most favorite words.
For years I’ve been trying to decide exactly which of my favorite foods he looks like. Dumplings? Marshmallows? Maybe shortcake or sourdough bread? Powdered-sugar doughnuts filled with vanilla custard? Definitely some sort of warm sweet roll confection.
Last week at school, we received an incident report for Nate. Nathaniel never receives incident reports unless he is the unfortunate bystander of some sort of accidental violence or calamity. At the dinner table, I looked at the chubby little crook of his elbow and there was a nasty red mark of someone’s entire toddler-sized dental impression.
“Nate, what happened? Did someone bite you?”
“Yeah, Ahana bit my arm.”
“What happened? Did you do something to make her bite you?”
“No, I was just sitting in circle time and she bit me.”
“She just chomped down on you? What did you do?”
“I cried and told the teacher.”
I admit, I was pretty skeptical of this story. Was he rewriting history so as to edit out the part where he snatched her toy before she clamped down so forcefully? I asked Miss Chethi to provide more context the next morning. Turns out Nate was in fact minding his own business at circle time and this little girl just leaned down and firmly bit down on his little eclair of an arm. Miss Chethi couldn’t tell what was happening until she saw Nate’s panic stricken face and came to his rescue.
As I’ve said, there is something about Nate that just makes him edible. Ahana was clearly just hungry.
Someone get that little girl a snack.