Sometimes, the eyes are bigger than the stomach
Can you believe it? A snake ate an alligator. Naturally it exploded. You may well have seen it in the news. Most papers picked it up, but it is still a shocker. It reminds me of the camp song about Mrs. Jackson. The first verse says that she swallowed a fly, and didn’t die. The verses go on where she swallowed a menagerie of creatures, a bird, cat, dog, and finally a horse. The concluding line notes that, after swallowing the horse, “she died, of course.” The snake too “died, of course.” I began to think of the snake as a symbol of a major problem in our culture.
This reminds me of one of my mother’s comments when I had taken too much to eat. “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.” As a little boy it took me a while to figure out what she was talking about. My stomach was much bigger than my eyes, after all.
We are all concerned about food, and we have a lot of trouble dealing with it. I noted on the street last week how many huge people there were, as well as those of us who could profitably loose a few pounds.
The snake reminds me of all the sayings we have about food. Children are told that “you have to clean your plate.” Perhaps that is the worst advice we have ever had, as so many of so do so and have pounds to loose, at least partially the result of too many clean plates.
If the clean plate advice didn’t work some were told that if they didn’t eat it the food would be given to the dog. Others were warned that there were children in Africa who would love to have the food. Over time most children figured out that no matter how much they ate it wouldn’t affect the children in Africa.
Some encouragement was more critical than helpful. People were warned that if they did not clean their plate, then they would not have any dessert. Another common phrase was: “I don’t car if you like it. It is good for you.”
As adults, people say to us that the best exercise is to push oneself away from the table. People are encouraged to eat carrots: “They are good for your eyes.” Fish also are brain food and will make you smarter.
Symbolically, food is about nourishment and parent’s anxiety gets all tangled up with it. In part, it becomes a symbol of parent’s ability to nurture and care for their families and consequently we are surrounded as children and adults about encouragement and warnings about food. These are a few that got stirred up in my mind when I saw the snake and alligator. I know this is not the whole lot. One of the best things we can do when looking at a symbol like this snake is to think of the phrases in our language about the subject.
What phrases were you brought up with that had extra power for you when you were young? What phrases have you used on your children that can be added to this list?