My childhood was a little odd compared to most other kids.  You see, I actually liked some vegetables better than sweets.  I suspect that many of you parents might be wishing that you had a perfect child like me.  My unique appetite may have been related to my mother feeding me baby foods until I was around twenty-eight years old.  In retrospect, I now recognize that none of the major babyinfant food companies squeeze a pureed slice of a fudge brownie into a little glass jar.

My candy consumption was also limited.  After I would come home from trick or treating every Halloween night, my mother would make me dump my goodies on the floor, where we would both seat ourselves, cross-legged.  We would sort my collection into three piles.  I didn’t really get to assign anything to a particular pile; I was mostly an observer in the annual ritual.  Into one of those piles would go everything that was made by the generous Mrs. Robertson.  Those went straight into the garbage, because Mom was sure that Mrs. Robertson let her fourteen cats walk all over the kitchen counters.  The second pile contained a couple of apples and a small box of raisins.  That was the pile I ended the night consuming.  I was never too sure what happened to the third pile, the one that had candy of every sort imaginable and popcorn balls.  As soon as the sorting was finished, my mom hastily took those into my parent’s bedroom.  They never again appeared.  The only time I ever was allowed to have candy was when I visited one pair of grandparents.  (My other grandparents just read me Bible verses all day, and convince me that God was not particularly enthusiastic about any behavior of a typical child.)

In defense of my mother, I believe that this sort of behavior is taught in the top secret motherhood school.  I know this because my wife exhibited the same behavior with our son on Halloween that my mother employed.  However my wife has never revealed the exact curriculum of this top secret school.

At twenty-nine, just as I was beginning to learn that meat, vegetables and applesauce do not have identical textures in their natural states, I discovered dessert in the form of a gourmet cheesecake.  Well, I guess it really wasn’t gourmet.  It came from a discount food warehouse, in a flimsy box with a cellophane peep hole that revealed the only attractive portion of the product.  But to my mouth that was primarily accustomed to pale brown meat in almost liquid form and thoroughly mashed green beans, it was heavenly.

Some years later, as I went through my gastronomical adolescence, my recreational use of foods helped me to realize that cheesecake didn’t really taste like cardboard, as my first experience had led me to believe.  I also discovered that cheesecake can come in a variety of flavors besides blueberry.

Dessert is now my favorite time of day. The best way to top off a well balanced meal of two jars of meat, three jars of thoroughly squashed squash and a banana is with a slice of turtle cheesecake.  Don’t allow this news to leak to my mother, though; she’ll just take it to her bedroom.

The saddest part of this story is that I don’t even know how to make a cheesecake.  If you have a recipe for one that doesn’t involve using either a mixer or an oven, please let me know.  I do know how to use a blender, though, because I watched my mom prepare the Thanksgiving turkey one year.

Author’s note:  I may have taken some creative liberties with slight exaggerations here and there, but I’m not concerned about being caught.  My mother is still not sure what the Internet is.