Amazing Alexia and the Red Chair Fiasco

I just want to say that I believe that if you tell someone that they are going to get something they really really want, then you should really really make sure that you follow through with that—especially, if that “something” is really really important to the person.

I love candy. I know that a lot of people love candy and that is an obvious thing to say but I really love candy. I think about candy a lot. I will sit and imagine living in a world made of candy and I get sad when I realize that the world is not made of candy and will never be made of candy.

My parents don’t allow sugar in the house. No cookies, no ice cream, no cereal that has sugar in the first 5 ingredients. Do you know how many cereals don’t have sugar in the first 5 ingredients!? Almost none. Grapenuts and those puffs that taste like styrofoam. That’s it.

I like the styrofoam puffs ok and I don’t even mind Grapenuts that much but it’s like eating little rocks. By the time the milk softens it up, it becomes a gigantic bowl of soggy mush. My dad gets mad at me every Saturday morning because I don’t finish my bowl. When I tell him it’s a soggy mush, he says “Why don’t you pour yourself a smaller bowl and then have a second bowl if you want more!?” I don’t know why I don’t do that. I am always sure that I am so hungry I will eat it all.

We don’t have dessert at my house. When I tell my dad I want something sweet, he tells me to eat some fruit. Fruit is not candy. It is fruit. There is nothing on earth that tastes like candy other than candy. Not dates, not apples, not red bell peppers, not prunes. Candy is the only thing that tastes like candy, period.

I remember one time we were all having cake as a special treat and my mom and her friends start talking about how they can’t eat any more because it is “too rich.” “Oh, this cake is so rich! I can’t eat another bite!” I almost cried I was so mad. What does that even mean? How can cake be “too anything” not to eat. I could understand if someone accidentally used salt instead of sugar. Or, I don’t like coconut, so if it were covered in coconut, I could see not being able to eat it or having to pick around the coconut. But this was chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. And I can promise you, it was the most amazing thing I have ever tasted.

So the other day, because Jesse and my mother were out of town, my dad tells me that if I get my chores done and read a certain amount before dinner, we can walk up the street to the store after dinner and pick out a piece of candy for dessert. Imagine if there was one thing that you loved more than any other thing in the whole world and you were never allowed to have it and someone told you that tonight after dinner you could have it. That is how I felt when my dad told me this.

All day I planned and dreamt and thought about what piece of candy I was going to choose at the store. The It’s It ice cream bar is the biggest thing I could get, but dad might not go for it and it is really hard to eat. It’s too big for my mouth and you have to bite into it rather than lick it, like most ice cream, which means I freeze my front teeth. Sometimes I get the Bit’o’Honey bar or a Charleston Chew because they take the longest to eat. I like both of those candy bars, but they’re not my favorite. I really love anything chocolate but all the chocolate stuff seems small. I think it might be a rip off.

Then. All of a sudden. Out of nowhere. At dinner time, for no reason at all, my dad says we are not going to get candy for dessert. He says I haven’t done my chores or my reading and the deal is off. I scream at him and tell him that I can finish it all after dinner and that I am working on it and I PROMISE I will finish it after dinner. It is not like I won’t do it. I will do it. I will do it after dinner. There is plenty of time. But he REFUSES! 

He is yelling at me, I am yelling at him. And then he storms off and I am left sitting in the kitchen all alone. This is the meanest and most unfair thing that anyone has ever done to me ever. I cannot see any reason on earth why I can’t just finish what I need to do after dinner. I don’t understand why it has to happen before dinner. There is plenty of time after dinner.

So I turn in my seat and bite down hard on the red vinyl chair that is one of a matching set that goes to the red Formica 1950s table that my mom loves. I don’t know why she likes this table and chairs so much. It seems like a cheap plastic table set to me. She says that it's the perfect house-wife kitchen set that all good house wives had in the 1950s and she thinks it's funny that we have it because she is a liberated working mom.

I didn’t rip the chair. I just bit it. Out of fury. And when I was done there was a bite mark left on the chair.

A few days later my mom screams at me and grounds me because I bit the chair. No, “Did you bite this chair?” or “Who bit this chair?” She didn’t ask my dad if he bit the chair or Jesse if he bit the chair. She just assumed that I bit the chair and got mad at me and grounded me.

What I don’t understand is why do they always assume that because something is wrong, I did it? It’s just not fair. If she had asked me, I would have admitted it. But she didn’t ask. She just saw the bite mark and got mad at me. What if I didn’t bite the chair!? What if Jesse bit the chair?