So what is the Ammonia Biscuit?

I call this little corner of the Internet the ammonia biscuit as it refers to a time in my life when my parents tried to kill me by force feeding me bread laced with floor cleaner. Events like that tend to have a lasting impact on an impressionable mind.

I suppose it is not entirely fair to blame my parents entirely for this. This particular assassination plot was masterminded by my kid brother who was still in diapers at the time. However, I do have to point out that parents who go along with a toddler's plan to execute his older siblings might be showing a touch of favoritism.

It all started one evening when my mother was making dinner, a roast I believe she said, and made the mistake of leaving the kitchen unattended for just long enough for Chef Toddler-yar-dee to wander in and try to assist. Like most kitchens, the truly dangerous stuff was within his reach under the sink while the items fit for human consumption were way up high where he might have to exert himself. Well, like all saboteurs, he knew speed was more important than finesse and proceeded to splash liquid death everywhere. My mother came in and found dinner was ruined and, so, she quickly had to improvise. Completely ignoring the tell-tale signs of drops of some liquid in the flour jar, she began making biscuits. I mean southern-style biscuits. Not the proper English cookies nor the New England scone like creations. I am talking about mounds of flour designed to act like a sponge to soak up gravy and other fluids so that not even the design is left on the plate when you are done chowing down.

When it was time for dinner my older brother and I participated in a long held family tradition of pushing and shoving in an attempt to hoard all the baked goods to ourselves. Ah, memories. Anyway, we both managed to grab a biscuit a piece, take a bite of warm buttered goodness . . . and spit it back out.

"Mom," we said in unison, "These taste really bad!"

That's when my mother said, "Oh no! The baby threw ammonia around everywhere and it must have got in the flour."

If you believed that I predict a rather sharp learning curve coming up. No, my parents went with option C in this multiple choice and decided it was unnecessary to, say, taste the biscuits or even sniff them for a hint of lemon scented floor cleaner. No, no, no. It's far more likely to assume your children who normally very enthusiastically devour biscuits both decided to be ungrateful liars and it made perfect sense to force them to finish eating them.

So, we did. Bite by bite we choked down every bit of that wretched stuff while my younger brother sat to one side eating his own toddler meal that was suspiciously untainted by his culinary skills. After a stern dressing down about how we needed to appreciate our mother more and this was a family and we should respect one another (irony alert coming up fast), my father finally sat down and took a bite of a biscuit . . . and spit it back out saying it tasted funny. No one forced him to finish his, though.

If I were more philosophical I might suggest how this is a metaphor for life. How the moments of joy are all laced with a hint of poison that we all have to just choke down. Or even contemplate the idea of the idea of trust between those with power and those without. Fortunately, I'm not philosophical and I'll just leave it with my family is crazy. This blog is about this and all the other little ammonia biscuits in life. It's also about me, bitter to the last bite.