Have you ever had a light bulb go off in your head one day that is ridiculous and unfathomable and totally unrelated to anything useful in life and if you voiced it to someone they’d look at you like you had three heads?
I grew up never having eaten Hamburger Helper. My mom ate it on a weekly basis when she was a kid and she vowed never again and given the chance, I’m pretty sure she’d smack the smile off that stupid white gloved hand on the box. As a result, it never occurred to me that anyone would eat that for dinner even though I passed it weekly in the grocery store. When Joe and I met, his cupboard was full of it and I was horrified. He was equally horrified by my vinegar stash, but I digress.
It’s like when you first go to college and you realize you can have dining hall frozen yogurt for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if you want. You have this “Aha” moment where you rebel against rules you never realized you were even following but that were just burned into you over years and years of habits and by virtue of familiarity.
(As an aside, Isn’t that terrifying to think about — how many rules am I unintentionally following right.this.minute?)
So anyway, this whole post was inspired by a discussion surrounding spaghetti sauce. When I was a kid, we had spaghetti from a box and sauce from a jar, which is not all that different from fatty glove helper hand I might add. It’s just what I was familiar with so to me, it was “right.” I married into a family where it is sacrilegious to even THINK about buying sauce in a jar. Prego = NO GO. You always always make it yourself, even if it takes hours to get it right. Joe’s spaghetti sauce is my tuna helper.
“You’ve never had hamburger helper cheesy macaroni?!”
“YOU’VE never had sauce from a JAR?!”
I think the sky fell just a bit, Chicken Little.
Another memorable absolute in my previously small little world includes the reliability that Santa wraps presents in your stocking. There are no labels on any presents, so you’d better pay attention. Whatever wrapping paper is in your stocking is the wrapping paper all the rest of your presents are in. Your sibling has the same theme wrapping in a different color. Layoff opening any of my coveted red micky mouse presents, snot-nosed little brother of mine.
But at other people’s houses, Santa brings an orange in your stocking and NO PEZ. Oh the humanity! And just ONE present is from him and is unwrapped and the others are wrapped in a smorgasbord of paper and from your parents with labels.
I’ve got to stop here or my head is going to explode. The older I get, the more I realize just how much I don’t know.
It baffeled me the first time I realized people had no clue what some of the german and welsh foods I grew up with. “You mean you don’t know what welsh cookies are?”
I’m with you on the Christmas presents. One wrapping paper per kid saved so much hassle. But I didn’t realize until I was in 5th grad that friends didn’t leave theirs up until my birthday in January. It just made sense to me and I made Hunni promise we’ll keep ours up that long :-)
you know, theres this awesome thing called nutella and you can only get it in canada… :)
We did the wrapping paper thing too, my mom still does it to this day.
And it baffles me beyond belief in DH’s family that they do’t do gifts. Not in a normal way anyway. They all exchange envelopes with gift cards. What’s the point? And can I say, where is the fun in that?
What’s this about all your presents in the same wrapping paper? DH and I are going into this holiday season with 30 different rolls of paper left over from other Christmas’s. To that 30 we have already added 3 rolls.
Santa would never limit himself to only 3 or 4 different rolls of paper for a while family. Bring on the smorgasbord
Dude, I never had Tuna Helper until about 6 months ago. So much wasted time! Best fast dinner ever once you add some veggies to it.
Sorry, but my new found love for Tuna Helper is rather strong.