I have no idea when it happened, but at some point in the last year, both our children became bona fide Granola Crunchies. Admittedly, Hiram and I went through our own GC phase in the 1970s. I shunned cosmetics, wore earth shoes on my feet and kerchiefs on my hair. I wore granny skirts, and Hiram wore bib overalls. In the summers, he didn’t cut his hair, so it bleached to a California blonde. We dreamed of building an earth home, or better yet of constructing a house out of a concrete culvert.
But when Jimmy Carter and his sweater were replaced by Ronald Reagan and his snappy suits, we converted. By the time our kids came along, we looked more like Ward and June Cleaver than Earth Mother and Yule Gibbons. So how in the world did our kids become more us than we ever were?
Our forays into crunchiedom were child’s play compared to our kids’ present shenanigans. Anne uses home recipes she finds on the internet to make menacing concoctions out of baking soda and tea, vinegar and beer, nuts and roots and berries. She claims the vile-looking stuff is shampoo or deodorant or tooth polish, gentle on the body and easy on the environment.
Allen is reading up on organic farming – with horses no less – and has researched a European method of house construction that involves a huge central stone fireplace and two logs a day for heat. He and his fiance think they can use the oven for all their baking, too.
The way I figure it, this Philo Granola Crunchie epidemic is the result of a genetic predisposition caused by one of two things:
- Hiram’s upbringing on a primitive Alaska homestead and his dream of entering a commune after high school.
- My incessant reading and rereading of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books throughout my childhood and twenty-five years of teaching elementary school.
So all you young mothers out there, if you don’t want your kids to end up like ours – disgustingly health conscious, resourceful, crafty with their hands, and concerned about the environment – quit reading good literature to them when they’d rather play video games. Don’t let them mess around with craft supplies, Legos, clay, twigs, found objects, and anything else that allows them to use their imaginations. Make them watch TV 24/7.
Oh, and don’t feed them granola and yogurt for breakfast. You’ll live to regret it.
