"Children Don't Compromise"

by Matthew C.
2007.08.21

You know I was sitting there during lunch looking at my bowl of Italian wedding soup and it hit me. Children don't compromise. They think they do, but they really don't. Children just oscillate from being 'more greedy' to 'less greedy'. They're always greedy, but that's childhood.

The reason my Italian wedding soup made me think this is because I was just on the phone with my mother and she dropped off the soup for me to eat at work. When I told her that I wanted wedding soup she responded “but you don't eat the spinach”. I told her that I used to avoid the spinach and try to eat only the pastina noodles, but now I eat the spinach with the rest of the soup.

As I was sitting there eating my soup I tried to rationalize WHY I was eating the spinach now and not then. I figured that it's really an economic issue. Now-a-days I'm spending money everywhere and have tons of bills to pay, where as before I didn't have monetary issues. Children can be picky about their food because they really don't have anything else to worry about. Here I am eating the spinach with the rest of the soup because IF I get filled up on a cup of soup, that's more money I can spend elsewhere.

But then that made me think. Am I being frugal now to perpetuate my greediness? Am I being stingy on food to save money for more TOYS like Super Metroid on the Wii's Virtual Console?

I don't know. I DO know that there doesn't seem to be any hard and fast answer. I stand by my comment that children don't compromise. At first, children don't know how to. Then, children don't need to... (necessarily)