I am officially hangry. “Dad, watch this!” My kid squirms down a squeaky winding slide, getting a face full of wood chips to round out her perfect-10 routine. “Wow,” I lie, squinting through the blinding sun bouncing off the playground structure at the park. This is the part I should feign shock and awe at her burgeoning physical talent, but my stomach is eating itself from starvation. As most parents do eclipsing DEFCON 1, I reach into that next level of the backpack—you know, under the wipes, capless markers, empty hand sanitizer, something sticky and an old disposable mask—and grab the first soft (edible?) thing I can find.
Chewy chocolate chip granola bar. Nothing special but I literally inhale the child-size bar, along with part of the foil wrapper.
Warm, expired string cheese. What’s the worse that can happen as I break every universal rule by shoving the whole floppy cylinder in my gullet.
Strawberry, banana apple sauce in the pouch thing. Like Paul Bunyan at the local Elks Club dinner buffet, I crush it, but still feel unsatisfied.
Pirate Booty. My arch-nemesis. I’ve never tried old, wet cardboard covered in pet dander, but I could imagine this isn’t too far off. My girls eat this stuff by the bucketload and I have trouble believing we’re blood-related. I shove one of the off-white puff balls between my lips, hoping my tastebuds have been sufficiently muted from the previous morsels. It’s horrendous, worse than I feared. A tear slowly streams down my face as I’ve lost all self worth, demoted to shelf-stable snacks to keep myself from passing out and abandoning my dangling child on the monkey bars.
I never realized the currency value of a solid snack as a parent. It’s the difference between a somewhat well-behaved child occasionally saying “please” and a hyperventilating sobbing gremlin that onlookers mistaken for a screaming banshee. It’s “let’s do one more errand” instead of “the day is over, the week is ruined and I simply give up as a parent.” I would roll my eyes as my wife reminded me to grab some grub before getting in the car. Now I have it engraved on our front door as a family motto.
Thou shalt not forget the snackage.
It started innocently enough once the kid switched to solid foods. Those wannabe-Cheerios that melt in your baby’s mouth to avoid choking. Practical and tasty! The squeeze packs of mushed fruits and veggies, featuring weird colors and weirder combinations (kale, starfruit and ginger root?). Then came Veggie Straws, the hottest trading commodity in preschool akin to cigarettes in prison. Crunchy, sure. But the hollow salty sticks are tasteless and monotonous and not good with ketchup (stop trying to be a french fry!).
What’s your go-to munchie? Thrillist put together a ranking of the 100 greatest snacks of all time. Let the debate begin!
I know what you’re thinking. Yes, our children eat fresh fruits and vegetables. Once a month, we build an authentic pilgrim cornucopia in the living room and they just have at it. Just kidding. But in a pinch, sometimes fill-in-the-blank-berries, bananas and grapes are just not accessible or rugged enough for a lunch box that is all too often treated as a launching projectile. (However, I will give it to carrots. Man, those things are tough. Baby carrots are anything but cute and fragile. Temperature, drop and time-resistant, these little suckers can be repurposed for months. Just rinse and repeat!)
Snacking has always seemed to be a challenge for mankind. We all want to be healthy, satiated and energetic. And we want the same for our kids, maybe minus the extra boost. It’s hard enough as a parent to think through three square meals. We have to fill in the gaps, too. Then, on the off chance you actually find something your kids like, you buy the 72-pack at Costco and—like clockwork—they hate it the next day. “I don’t like mini rainbow goldfish in the shape of Mickey Mouse. I like the cheddar sour cream Cheez-Its that are fed to me like a baby bird in the pink Paw Patrol bowl.”
But as I sit pathetically on one side of the teeter-totter, chewing the bottom of the bag cud, I see that snacks really define us. They shape childhood memories, bring us back to simpler times, and remind us when life was easy. You could eat whatever the hell you wanted, sleep 14 hours and wake up ready to conquer the world (or at least recess). Dunkaroos and Hostess HoHos made everything better for me. And maybe my girls feel the same about Pirate Booty and Veggie Straws. I’ll be there to make sure those moments come to life. Just don’t ask me to share.