"I don't want any more. Do you want it?" "I didn't like it anyway"

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Replies

  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 33,907 Member
    oooooooohhhh.

    It's about guilt-tripping people? After reading all these replies that's what I'm getting. Since OP didn't come back to explain. :lol:

    Guilt-tripping and manipulation and martyrdom? THAT I know something about.

    My mother and I both played that game. We even had a phrase we would use when we suspected the other person was slipping into the, "poor me," thing, and that was, "It's nice here in the rain." (said dripping with sarcasm)

    We just didn't do it with food. Food was never an issue other than I didn't like most of it. One of my biggest life-regrets is growing up in Florida and Refusing to eat seafood...lobster...fish. All those great meals I missed.

    [that smell, tho]
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,950 Member
    kpoe1981 wrote: »
    "Do you want this cause I was just going to throw it away" So many different variations of this sentence I heard growing up and it took me until I was older to actually understand what was going on. Dad actually really liked that sandwich. Mom really loved that cake. Grandma went to the store specifically to get that pie. And because they loved me and that is just what some parental figures do for their children. Or I was eyeballing that food like I was starving. Or I said something like...I like pie/sandwich/cake too I wish I had some....they pretended they didn't want it anyway. My 2 month old baby girl is going to get a lot of my "I didn't like it anyway" foods when she grows up because that's just what we do.

    The only thing anywhere close to this that I experienced was a literal offer, not some kind of pretense like you seem to be describing: Someone was cleaning up after a meal or cleaning out the refrigerator and was really planning on throwing something away (from the fridge) or trying to save dirtying a storage container or giving you a chance to eat something that was going to go downhill fast taste-wise in the fridge (e.g., fresh sliced tomatoes in the summer). Maybe in the meal cleanup situation Mom was going to eat the last spoonful of something rather than stick it in the fridge, and was either being nice or watching her own waistline by offering it to someone else.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,846 Member
    edited February 2020
    oooooooohhhh.

    It's about guilt-tripping people? After reading all these replies that's what I'm getting. Since OP didn't come back to explain. :lol:

    Guilt-tripping and manipulation and martyrdom? THAT I know something about.

    My mother and I both played that game. We even had a phrase we would use when we suspected the other person was slipping into the, "poor me," thing, and that was, "It's nice here in the rain." (said dripping with sarcasm)

    We just didn't do it with food. Food was never an issue other than I didn't like most of it. One of my biggest life-regrets is growing up in Florida and Refusing to eat seafood...lobster...fish. All those great meals I missed.

    [that smell, tho]

    Sounded like martyrdom to me rather than guilt tripping, given how the OP as a child was eyeballing the food.

    I have no regrets about refusing to eat food that was grown in a shell. When I was 9, I threw up after eating scallops and didn't eat bivalves again for decades, and only then if they were scallops wrapped in bacon. I'd rather have bacon-wrapped asparagus though. Or bacon-wrapped chicken. Or just about anything else. Except liver. I'll save the liver for @lemurcat2 :smiley:

    I don't care for lobster, but unlike liver, no one tried to force me to eat that :lol:

    I still leave the kitchen when bivalves are being cooked.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,950 Member
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    I didn't like it anyway would make me think "why do you think I would" unless it was a known preference difference (i.e., my sister saying "do you want my pickle").

    Also, liver is delicious. ;-) My mom hated it and would not eat it, but my dad loves it and would cook it (and later I would cook it) when my mom was out of town for work.

    I agree. We didn't have a dog, so my mom told the older siblings it was steak, but by the time we younger ones came along, you couldn't really carry off things like that, because an older sib would spill the beans (unlike when they were young, and stuffed the [lima] beans into crevices under the seats of their chair, which my mom found years later when reupholstering them). But I liked liver. We only had poultry liver when I was a kid (I guess she gave up on the beef liver when she couldn't get the older kids to eat it), but when I grew up and encounter calf and beef liver on my own, I like it.
  • Katmary71
    Katmary71 Posts: 6,482 Member
    When I grew up, I was told that children were starving to death by the thousands in Biafra - and: "how dare you leaving good food on your plate? Your mother was slaving over the stove and hot pots for hours on end, is that how you are re - paying her? You better eat what's on your plate, or else!"

    "Starving kids in Africa" from my Mom....well, our dog got really fat!

    This is how I grew up too, both parents were poor and the oldest so nothing should go to waste. We weren't allowed to leave the table until we ate everything and definitely didn't get dessert unless we did. My Dad still gives me food like I'm starving and I'm 48. In college he'd give me boxes of granola bars, I had a crate that always had a bunch at all times. I did no sweets for 2 months and made it very clear I wasn't going to cave and he put a bag of gingersnaps on the couch next to me when I was already struggling with not grabbing candy out of the candy dish. It's his way of showing affection, I just try as politely as possible to refuse.

  • nutmegoreo
    nutmegoreo Posts: 15,532 Member
    edited February 2020
    oooooooohhhh.

    It's about guilt-tripping people? After reading all these replies that's what I'm getting. Since OP didn't come back to explain. :lol:

    Guilt-tripping and manipulation and martyrdom? THAT I know something about.

    My mother and I both played that game. We even had a phrase we would use when we suspected the other person was slipping into the, "poor me," thing, and that was, "It's nice here in the rain." (said dripping with sarcasm)

    We just didn't do it with food. Food was never an issue other than I didn't like most of it. One of my biggest life-regrets is growing up in Florida and Refusing to eat seafood...lobster...fish. All those great meals I missed.

    [that smell, tho]

    I'm reading it differently. I think OP was just sharing a fond memory from childhood where she noticed a parent/loved one consuming something that she liked and when asked about it, the adults would offer her some using those phrases. I think this is nothing more than a fond memory she is talking about using with her children.

    My food memories more closely resemble others here around being made to eat everything on the plate whether I took it or if it was dished up for me. One of my favourite food memories as a child would be going to McDs with my dad and my brother and I would get whatever we wanted, and my dad never ordered anything. He knew there would be plenty left over. :laugh:

    ETA: To clarify, it was my mother who insisted we empty our plates, my father didn't mind, because he would empty them for us.
  • 7sorok
    7sorok Posts: 112 Member
    Oh, my! We were extremely poor and chickens were scarce. The whole country was poor at that time. So when Mom had money to buy chicken, it was a holiday and, of course, kids got some best pieces, but adults somehow either ate already and/or didn't like the chicken. So, that's the memory of my beloved parents. This is the ultimate sacrifice. And about the liver. We had to eat it because it was healthy - it has a lot of iron and it's much better than iron from the bottle.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,879 Member
    edited February 2020
    I don't really recall anything like this growing up. We had meal times and we ate meals. If we had pie or cake, it wasn't just a piece and everyone was having desert. The only thing I remember food wise was that my dad was a picky eater and often didn't like whatever my mom had prepared for dinner so he would eat a peanut butter sandwich and it would royally piss her off.

    We were pretty broke, so it was a lot of tuna and noodle casseroles, pork and beans on white bread, etc.