Baby bellas were on sale at the grocery store recently, so I'm sitting down to my roughly biannual plate of scrambled eggs with scallions and mushrooms. It isn't an attractive meal, but it's so delicious. But now I can't make and eat it anymore without thinking of thefirethorn's oldest son, fireandcheese. Because last time I visited them, I made her a big plate of scrambled eggs with mushrooms and spinach. The kids had already been fed; we were not in any way going to try to convince them to try mushrooms and spinach. But just as I handed her her plate, fireandcheese walked into the room, looked at it, and said "Eww."

And it delighted me. I never would have thought a kid declaring perfectly delicious, healthy food to be gross would be cute. But it was just the way he said it — not a big theatrical "I'm not going to eat that," but a tiny involuntary astonished reaction, exactly the kind of slightly frightened noise someone might emit when faced with a bloody car wreck or other disaster. It wasn't intended to convey information to us at all.

It was, in essence, dismay at what we were about to do to ourselves.

And that was all there was to it — he didn't complain about it, we didn't try to change his mind. We ate our grown-up food and proclaimed it good.

But that tiny, horrified "Eew." has taken up humorous residence in my brain. It's hard to explain why it's so damn funny, except to say that fireandcheese is normally a very expressive, uninhibited child, and we managed to stymie him past words just by eating food we both liked.

This does not make me like scrambled eggs with vegetables any less, but now every time I see them, I hear a tiny, hurt "Ew." in the back of my mind. Sorry, kid. Grown-ups are weird sometimes.

I'm-a feelin': pleased