Stuck To Those Weird Notions Like Syrup On Your Shirt

It’s the late 1990s and my sister and I are kids. Over the few years this story takes place in, she is nine to twelve and I am ten to thirteen. She has developed some odd eating preferences.

My parents have always stocked our pantry with [Brand #1] pancake syrup. One day, they bring home a bottle of [Brand #2]. I try it and it’s fine, but I think [Brand #1] is a little better.

Sister: “Can you pass me the syrup?”

I slide over the bottle of [Brand #1].

Sister: “No! The [Brand #2] one! That one is gross.”

Me: “It’s [Brand #1]; we’ve always used it and you liked it before. How is it suddenly gross?”

Sister: “No, I haven’t! I only eat [Brand #2].”

Me: “We never even had [Brand #2] until very recently! You’ve eaten [Brand #1] all your life!”

We argue back and forth about it until our parents break it up, and they never try to back me up that my sister is rewriting history. We usually stock both kinds of syrup until we grow up but there are occasions when we’re out of one or the other. On an occasion where we are out of [Brand #2], my sister is a sobbing inconsolable wreck after learning that she cannot eat the pancakes Dad has made because the horrible, horrible [Brand #1] syrup is her only option.

Another time, we have the opposite problem; we have only [Brand #2].

Dad: “Bad news: we only have [Brand #2] syrup, so you won’t eat the pancakes.”

Me: “You’re thinking of [Sister] and her hatred of [Brand #1]. I think [Brand #1] is better, but I don’t mind [Brand #2].”

Dad: “No way. You always complain about [Brand #2].”

Me: “Dad, you have it completely backward!”

I grab the bottle of [Brand #2] and give him a pointed look while I pour it over my pancakes and start eating. My dad drops the issue.

My sister also suddenly decides to translate her habit of cutting the crust off of sandwiches to… pretty much every food with a flat surface. She starts cutting the edges off of pancakes and waffles. Aren’t waffles basically all “crust”? We make homemade cookies and she punches a hole out of the center, eats the one bite of that cookie, and throws the rest in the sink! It is so wasteful and we go through the cookies so much faster. I can’t even persuade her to leave the cookie rings aside for me to eat. She is convinced that the majority of each cookie is inedible “crust” and has to be thrown out. The edge brownies suffer a similar fate of being cut in half so their “crusts” can be thrown away.

Then, there’s cereal. No, she doesn’t cut the “crust” off of cereal; she just believes that when cereal boxes are redesigned, it means that the cereal is vastly improved and she convinces herself that the flavor is different. For example, one day, [Cereal] changes the design of the box to move the tagline from their commercials, “Cinnamon and sugar in every bite!” to the lower center of the box.

Sister: “Mmmm, it’s much better now!”

Me: “What are you talking about?”

She points excitedly to the tagline on the box.

Sister: “Now there is cinnamon and sugar in every bite!”

Me: “That’s just the thing they say in their commercials! It’s the same cereal; they just changed the box!”

Sister: *Eats another bite * “No, it’s much better now because there’s cinnamon and sugar in every bite.”

I could never convince her that it was the same cereal. I don’t know what her logic was. Did [Cereal Manufacturer] somehow previously arrange the cereal squares so they’d fall into the bowl in such a way that some bites would have cinnamon and sugar but then some bites were just plain wheat? She’s less insane as an adult, but her denials of reality used to drive me nuts when we were kids.