Happy Fall Festival

The twins are off to kindergarten today to celebrate “Fall Festival,” a multicultural event that does not involve any costumes. Dr. Hawes informs us that because many of the students in the school hail from foreign countries that do not celebrate Halloween, the school feels that is incumbent upon them to make sure that such students are never able to assimilate to American culture, as doing so might lead to them to becoming financially independent and therefore not receptive to living in a nanny state run by Democrats who would seek to keep them in a state of perpetual servitude to the Party. Well, that’s not what she actually said, but it is true nonetheless.

We got a good bit of Halloween cheer in on Saturday, and plan to do more tonight of course. There is a downside to Halloween though, as the following dietary woes make clear.

Joey’s Saturday diet:

Upon completion of the soccer game (2:30 pm): one Capri Sun juice box and a bag of goldfish crackers, and whatever else he managed to abscond due to the lax parenting skills exhibited by his father.

At the neighborhood Halloween parade (3:30 pm – 5:00): a lollipop, a bag of pretzels, a fistful of candy corns, a couple of Hershey kisses, and whatever else he managed to abscond due to the lax parenting skills exhibited by his father.

At the costume birthday party for Bill and Joe (6:30 pm – 8:30 pm): a half a dozen rice crispy bars rolled up as balls, coated with something white with an M&M in the middle to look like human eyes, a couple of large chocolate chip cookies, a juice box (perhaps 2), half of a large helping of ice cream, and whatever else he managed to abscond due to the lax parenting skills exhibited by both his parents. In a testament to his self-restraint, he did not eat all of the ice cream, and did not have a piece of his own cake.

At approximately 3:00 am in the morning: threw up three times in his bed, all over his sheets, pillow, pajamas, and brother. In a testament to his optimistic outlook, he says, and I quote: “It is a good thing I didn’t eat all of the ice cream. I only ate half and a I threw up 3 times. If I ate it all, I would have thrown up five times.”

I read once that they did an experiment with a group of 2 years olds (I think that was the age), and later tracked their comparative life outcomes some three or four decades later. The experiment went like this: the 2 year old is offered a chocolate chip cookie, which he can eat right away. But he is also instructed that if he chooses to wait fifteen minutes before eating the cookie, he can have 2 cookies. It is a test of whether the later ability or inability to defer gratification is observable at such an early age – those who ate the cookies without waiting the fifteen minutes were far more likely down the road to end up as vagrant petty criminals.

I never applied the test to my kids, because if they failed I’d have spent all my remaining time prepping them for a re-take. We’d be sitting at the table, with the twins 15 years old, and I’d be explaining to them all of the bad things that will happen beyond not getting the second cookie if they ate the first with haste. And it would be to no avail. Some things are just better left unknown.