"Who's on First in Riley World?"

Conversations in Riley World can sound a lot like the Abbott & Costello skit “Who’s On First?”

This first instalment of “Who’s on First in Riley World” involves lunch at school. On the days R goes to work experience he will take a sandwich for lunch as it’s a little quicker than cooking his lunch. Now by sandwich I mean 2 slices of white bread, 1 paper thin slice of deli ham, turkey or chicken that you can pretty much see through if you held it up to the light and absolutely no condiments what-so-ever. Doesn’t exactly make your mouth water now does it?

Of course there must be no visible signs of crust or any remnants of brown along the outer edges of the bread. Although R is in the routine of having ham on Mondays and turkey or chicken on Wednesdays, we found that with such a thin slice of meat there is actually no taste involved, have resorted to basically lying to him by only buying one type of meat for the week and continue to tell him it’s ham on Mondays and turkey or chicken on Wednesdays. Yes I know this is terrible; no, he has not said anything and yes we will probably go to hell for it.

When K (another “extended” member of our family) first took on the task of sandwich making/eating with R, we decided “the incentive” (aka McDonald’s medium fries in the small brown bag and a small sprite with no ice) would definitely be required. Riley would be asked to eat his sandwich “nicely” (no yelling or hitting the table) and he would not be penalized for the dry heaving and gagging we’ve come to expect when R tries new foods. Luckily McD’s is a major incentive for R and when he “earns” it, he is most proud of himself and will be the first to wholeheartedly share his accomplishments. Yes we are most definitely going to hell.

Apparently he has not been eating his sandwich “nicely” at school of late and so once again “the incentive” has been put into play. The conversation went something like this:

R:      (all excited coming in the house from school) I ate my sandwich nicely!!
Me:   Great job!
R:     Thanks!
Me:   Did you really eat your sandwich nicely?
R:     (looking a little sheepish) Yes (nodding his head)…I ate it nicely. (trying to sound convincing)
Me:   Or did you throw your sandwich in the garbage?
R:     (in his sad voice) I threw it in the garbage.

At this point, G pipes in.
G:      How many pieces did you eat? (G cuts his sandwich into quarters)
R:      I ate 4 pieces.
Me:   Did you eat 4 pieces or 2 pieces? (Again, I question his answer and offer him a choice of answers as often times he will just repeat whatever the second choice is.)
R:      I ate 4 pieces.

So at this point we’re pretty sure he threw 4 pieces of his sandwich into the garbage after eating it “nicely”. Oish.