Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Conversations With Piper: Ketchup

Our lunch today included generous portions of diced, fried potatoes, which Piper turned her nose up at. I was frustrated and resigned myself to her lunch consisting of 3 bites of tortilla and the half-glass of my orange soda she'd guzzled before I could stop her.

Then I got out the ketchup for something else I was cooking, and she perked right up.

"I would like some ketchup," she said, her eyes focused like little lazer beams on the red bottle.
"You can't just eat ketchup," I said, "you have to have it on something."
"I want ketchup on my fries," she said, hopping up and down.
"Fries?" I asked, having forgotten all about the cast-off potatoes.
She ran to the little table where she eats most of her meals and picked up the kid-size bowl of potatoes she had refused earlier. "On these potatoes," she said patiently. I squeezed a generous dollop of ketchup on one side of the bowl and she ran back to her table and started to chow down.
Pleased, I returned to the tomato sauce I was simmering.
"I want some more ketchup!" she called three minutes later.
"You need more ketchup already?" I was suspicious. I looked in her bowl, and sure enough, most of her ketchup was gone. I gave her some more, and she requested a third helping less than five minutes later.
"What are you doing over here?" I asked as I brought the bottle over. I gave her some more.
"I'm just eating my ketchup," she answered, dipping a chunk of potato into the puddle of red I'd just dropped into her bowl.
"You're eating just the ketchup?"
"Yeah." She licked the ketchup off the potato and dunked it again.
"Are you actually eating any potato?" I asked her.
"No," she said, licking the ketchup off the fork and potato again. "I'm just eating ketchup."

I guess I did ask.