Of healthy eating and yours truly...

If you’ve been reading the other blog, you would know that the child is now enrolled, kicking and screaming, in an advanced professional swimming batch, the kind that has scarily earnest moms writing down timings of every lap their child does, bringing in protein shakes in tupperware bottles and discussing ounce by ounce calorie counts and nutritional elements in any item of food you might care to discuss. No. None of them took me up on my offer to discuss Mumbai vada pav and edged away carefully from me in the event I had a machete up my sleeve and would start to swing it wildly at them. You get the drift.
I am a terrible misfit at being part of this group of moms. I sit apart and I tweet while the child is put through his paces. I ask him if he wants Smileys post a session. I am an abomination on this clan of super moms, and I slink in dark corners and gulp apologetically when they ask me about my son’s best timings and what meets he’s competed in and such like.
It came to pass that as part of this group, we parents were to attend a talk by a noted sports counsellor. In keeping with the parental duties, I spit polished the child, got myself into mommy wear and packed my notepad and pen (all the better to take notes with, my dear) and took self and child to the hall where it was being conducted.
The gentleman talking to us about motivation and such like was all sweet and elderly and we listened to him politely, until he got cracking on the topic of healthy eating, which is where the sting ray hit mine butt. No fried food he said, I nodded sagely. No icecreams. No sweets. No junk food. Cut out all the empty calories. I was all zen. Then he added, rather unnecessarily, I thought, that we parents had to set the example. This sprung on me when I had just procured a new giant sized jar of Nutella was a little rich I thought, but decided not to voice my objection. Cut out the fried stuff–such absolute blasphemy. There would be a worldwide dip in the sales of ready to fry cold storage items if the child and I gave them up for good. Could we risk destabilising the economy thus, there were jobs in those factories that produced these packets of to be deep fried stuff, hatcheries that raised these chickens and such like. Then there was the small issue of forgoing the sweet stuff. To think that I would never eat tiramisu again, the heart it did an ungainly flop to my toes where it remained static for a microsecond before lurching into my throat, effectively rendering me speechless for the rest of the evening. Perhaps I could have the occasional sweet thing, I consoled myself, perhaps I could delude myself that the child would not mind passionately that I was ingesting the sugary stuff while keeping it under lock and key as far as he was concerned, maybe I could bash this mommy guilt monster on the head and throw the carcass off a high cliff. Then there was the eat healthy carbs bit, of which I was tempted to put hands over ears and sing nye nye nye nye…but of course wiser sense and the fact that I was seated in row one, prevailed over me giving way to such baser instincts and I gritted teeth and bore it magnificently. It has been a couple of days of healthy eating. If you see me walking around the place, skulking in dark corners, my jaw tripping up the feet, click your tongue in sympathy and hand me a sugar cube, will you.

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