Bagel Bites
When Thomas gets off the bus he has three questions, usually in this order: “Where’s Posey?” (Posey is our cat); “Is the mail here yet?” (Thomas considers it his job to retrieve any mail we receive); and “What’s for dinner?”
My answers are usually the following: “I don’t know where Posey is; probably sleeping somewhere;” “I don’t know if the mail is here yet; why don’t you go check;” and “I don’t know what I’m fixing for dinner yet.”
You’d think I’d learn to have the answers handy, wouldn’t you? It’s as simple as hunting down the cat in one of her 483 hiding spots, going to the mailbox and NOT retrieving any mail inside and mentally coming up with some food items that I can assemble for a meal in the next two to three hours… but no. That would disturb the “Who’s on First” routine.
Thomas is often ready with helpful, hopeful suggestions for dinner. He varies between pizza, chicken nuggets or pizza bagels, which (and I understand if you don’t immediately know this) are a complete different food choice than regular pizza. Pizza bagels, you see, are a project. There are steps involved. There’s a recipe to follow, which you have to look up on YouTube. You have to have Thomas’ bagels. You have to have squeezable pizza sauce, which is on a specific aisle. And you have to have pizza cheese.
Thomas’ class made pizza bagels last summer and he’s something of an expert. He offers to cook them whenever we have anyone over – Uncle Dan and Tio Randy, Poppy, the strangers who arrived to attend a meeting I hosted for the ACLU – and he’s over-the-moon happy about the chance to make them. (For the record, Uncle Dan and Tio Randy and Poppy got to enjoy the bagels, we declined his offer for the ACLU meeting.)
A few months ago I got an email from Thomas’s teacher asking if Thomas was allowed to eat Bagel Bites, which are mini pizza bagels you can buy frozen. Apparently someone at school had them and Thomas was intrigued. (I correctly read “intrigued” as “tried to sneak one by helpfully pointing out something to distract the Bagel Bites owner to look away while Thomas attempted to snitch one off the plate.”) Because Thomas has food intolerances – like allergies, but a much less intense reaction to foods that cause him problems – we can let him have his beloved foods only once in a while. We came up with using Bagel Bites as an enticement to do something at school (in this case, a once-a-month reward for remembering to raise his hand instead of blurting out answers in class) and Thomas was thrilled. He was also now laser-focused on the idea of purchasing Bagel Bites and having them in his very own freezer.
For the next several weeks he would casually try to steer our shopping cart down Aisle 5 at Raley’s, where he would – surprise! – discover that they had – gasp! — Bagel Bites! Who knew? He urgently needed to check the frozen section at WalMart, Target and Trader Joe’s too. The price of Bagel Bites came up in random conversations, like this: “Hey, Mom? Do you have any dollars? Do you have $8.98?”
As a Very Special Treat we consented to having pizza bagels or Bagel Bites for dinner one night during Spring Break. (Thomas: “We can?! What night? Sunday? What’s that date? I will write it on the calendar!”) He visited the box of Bagel Bites in Aisle 5 approximately 17 times in four shopping trips before we purchased them and asked 23 times if it was time to start making dinner, starting at 11:43 a.m. When it came time to cook the mini miracles he followed the directions carefully and he was giddy when they finally cooled enough to eat. (“Oh, Bagel Bites, I love you!”) It turns out that happiness is actually measurable: $8.98, Aisle 5.
I still don’t know where Posey is, or if the mail is here, but I know I’m going to have to fend off the suggestion of making Bagel Bites every night for the remainder of Spring Break.
Juliana LeRoy wears many hats, including wife, mother, paraeducator and writer. She can be spotted around Windsor gathering material, or reached at ml****@so***.net
