EdaMommy Knows Best

The Scene: a barbecue at the house of one of our neighborhood friends. Six adults, seven children.

First of all, our lovely hosts had those special paper plates that each sport the visage of some friendly cartoon elephant or tiger or fish or whatnot. And the ears double as two little cups to hold, I don't know, peas or grapes. K. lined up the plates, first asking if my girls would have any animal preference (no, thanks, they would not). She then whipped out a Sharpie that appeared to be reserved for such moments and wrote each child's name between the ears on each plate. Hmmmmmm. Impressive.

Our other neighbor swooped onto the scene. She began to shell the edamame and place a handful of the shiny beans in one of the ears on each plate. I will now refer to her only as EdaMommy. "My kids insist that I do this," spake EdaMommy. "And I'm so desperate for them to eat something green, that I do it." I laughed, but it was one of those over-my-rotting-corpse-would-I-ever-do-that laughs. I hope she didn't notice. When she finished with the edamame, she asked if all the kids like carrots. They did, so carrots went in the other ear cup.

I'll save you from some of the more excruciating details and just tell you this: two of the seven kids did eat corn, but not on the cob, so I gamely cut the kernels off two ears of corn and placed them on the appropriate plates. Four of the seven kids wanted only strawberries, not cantaloupe and certainly not with the mint leaves scattered throughout. I separated the fruits, picked out the mint, and did my best to remember who wanted what. EdaMommy cut the tri-tip in tiny pieces to ward off worries about choking, and served it up. K. sliced up soy dogs and put those on the plates, too. Three kids required ketchup. Five wanted lemonade, one wanted milk, and one wanted "spah-kling water." We used white cups for all to eliminate shouts of "I want purple! Orange is my favorite! Why does he get the yellow?" The Sharpie was pulled out once again to mark the cups.

Was this intricate, time-consuming, ridiculous ballet worth the effort? I couldn't believe it, but yes. The kids sat on one side of the patio without issuing a single complaint between them. All they did was ask nicely for more lemonade or steak or mint-less strawberries, and we took turns getting up to tend to them. Otherwise, they left us to our grown-up talk which—they'd be thrilled to know—was all about them.

But I'm still not gonna buy those stupid plates.