Green Eggs and Ham

“Sam I am!” My daughter, at 3 has learned the final line by heart and knows most of the rest by now. I usually try to give my wife a break after dinner and read our children their bedtime stories.

When our son was born, I did the nighttime routine with him (except for the bath. I didn’t have the required doctorate in Babies and Water, so I wasn’t allowed near the bathroom during that time. However, the one night our son had a high fever I was the one that got to sit in the cold bathtub with him while my wife called the doctor, emergency room, her mother and Dr. Sears.) That meant swaddling and giving him his nighttime bottle. This was our bonding time.

Eventually the bottle changed to a cup of milk and crackers while I read him two stories. It had to be two stories, not one long book or three short books—two! Anything else and his little world was thrown into chaos. Now, you might be thinking that is a sign of future problems. Both sets of grandparents thought the same thing and delicately brought up that he needed to be evaluated. But this is my son. While he can be a little OCD about his Hot Wheels cars, the two books, when you add in my wife’s genes and mine, made perfect sense.

One book meant he was going to bed too early, because two is obviously more than one. But… he knew if he pushed it to three, he was skating on thin ice, especially after I’d had a bad day at work. So two was safe, and if he picked out thick ones, he could push the limit even further.

When our daughter graced us with her presence, I did her nighttime routine also. We moved from Washington, DC to Pennsylvania shortly after she was born. My daughter and I spent many a relaxing evening next to the fire, watching TV while she had her bottle(s). At least that was the plan. Usually, she’d wake up halfway through the bottle and decide that her tiny fingers needed to see how pliable my eyes were.

We had a nice routine for a while. Both the children would take their baths/showers then I’d separate my daughter from the pile of energy that raced around the house, wrestle her into her pajamas (I only made the mistake of telling her one time that she was getting her brother’s old pajamas. The, “They too big for me!” left no doubt what her opinion on the matter was.) and take her downstairs to rock. When she outgrew her bottle (an executive decision my wife and I made after she unscrewed the lid and poured the contents out) I decided it was time for her to join her brother during story time.

To make it fair, she picked one book and her brother picked another book. Since they are both adorers of Thomas the Train, we were guaranteed a book that took us to the isle of Sodor. The other book was usually a Dr. Seuss.

As a writer and teacher, I’ve always admired Dr. Seuss. He wrote books to help children learn through repetition of small recognizable words. And then managed to rhyme each sentence (no small feat but made somewhat easier by his knack of making up words.) As a father, who’d spent the day working on computers or teaching people and was drained, I’ve always carried an undying hatred for him. Getting my mouth to form those made up words and my eyes to focus on them in the early evening is a stretch. That is, until I found Green Eggs and Ham.

Pure and simple, this work should go down in history along side War and Peace. While it may not address the same social, economic and political issues that Tolstoy covered, it has saved my sanity. I know the words by heart and… every single word in the book is a… word! Fifty plus pages of rhymes with words that I knew.

After the first thirty or forty times of reading it, I sensed that my children were losing interest in the storyline. Now, I could have just let it go and moved on to another book, but I was still looking forward to our nightly reading. Our children are complete opposites when it comes to eating. Our daughter will eat anything (including strawberries dipped in mustard) and our son would make a picky eater jealous. So, thinking quick one night as both kids began wandering away when I reached for Green Eggs and Ham, I shouted, after the first refrain of, “I do not like Green eggs and Ham,” “Do you like green eggs and ham?” My daughter looked and me and shook her head, “No.” My son followed with “No!”

We had common ground now. I lead them both through the refrains, each time louder until the house shook with their screams of, “No, I do not like green eggs and ham!” (Yes, my wife also pointed out that getting them that riled up right before bed was not the brightest move I’ve made).

We finished with the revelation that green eggs and ham are good. I had no doubt my daughter would agree (remember the strawberries). I was shocked when my son answered, yes, he does like green eggs and ham. I was even more surprised when the next night at dinner, he did his normal balking at trying something new, until I brought up green eggs and ham. He tried the new dish. When I asked him how it was, he answered, “Not too terrible.”

Well… you can’t win all the time.