About Those Sardines: Dad Responds

I can neither confirm nor deny those rumors about me and Maureen Dowd having an affair, but we did share Sunday morning together, and you know what that means. On the page, silly. Just me and Dowd, tearin it up in the Week in Review. She was yammering about Afghanistan again, while I used my precious column inches to warn the world about the disastrous allure of E.L. Fudge. The story got some good response and I got some nice emails, but apparently, my dad got calls from everyone he's ever known, demanding to know: why sardines of all things? Good question! He has taken the time to respond. Let me just preface the response by noting that he claims I actually liked sardines in third grade, which, as we all know, is highly doubtful: 

Josh’s Dad Explains The Sardines

Ever since Josh's article ran in the Times, I have heard from friends, friends of friends, and long lost high school acquaintances from back in Fargo, people I have not spoken to in decades, all with one question on their minds: “Why the sardines?” Since it is holiday time, and holiday time entails social events, that has provided quite a forum for people to badger me in person. After all, who sends their kid to school with sardines for lunch? 

First, some background. Josh attended an Orthodox Jewish day school in St. Louis for first and second grade. Kids brought their own lunches, but they could bring only dairy lunches so there were no issues with the pesky laws of kashrut, which prohibits mixing meat and dairy. Other kids also canned tuna or sardines, so we provided Josh with same. He happily chowed on sardines for two years. When we moved to Minneapolis, he also attended a Jewish day school, but one without the idea of sardines as food. The lunchroom caper in his piece took place there. My hypothesis: the shock of Josh's sardines in the new, sardine-less cafeteria environment made his lunches seem weird. That was why he was on the outs. It was not misguided parenting!  

I will say that Josh's younger brother, Ethan, benefited from such experiences and never had sardines in his lunch bag.

Suffice it to say, this is not how I remember my childhood encounters with sardines, which as I recall always entailed sweating beneath the pergola while trying to use bicycle tires, pencil sharpeners, or rocks to open the cans, which were built to survive a nuclear detonation. If only there were no keys. On that front, little has changed; I'm a bit scatterbrained with my housekeys today. But as to the main question I have gotten the most since my piece ran -- whether i like sardines today -- the answer is: of course! I mean, we're all adults now. I just might put them in my kids lunches some day.

Comments

[Sheila (step-mom of Josh and Ethan)]

I remember when I came on the scene the shopping list always said "Dips" and wondered if you liked spinach dip, onion dip -- but you meant sweet, chewy, chocolatey Quakers Dipps granola bars. Yum, bette than cake

[Robert bearman]

I would like let you know that Lauren has attended an
Orthodox Jewish day school her entire life and she has never even seen a can of sardines. On the other hand, she frequently had cake.

[Ethan]

I think dad may be remembering that I used to like sardines when I was about 8 or 9. I also used to be quite fond of pickled herring in jars. Now I find both of these foodstuffs repulsive.

And in response to dad's last comment, it's not like my lunches were full of sought after commodities (I too longed for my neighbors' capri-suns).

It was a rare occasion when we would BEG dad to get some "kudos" snack bars for our lunches. Mostly it was a piece of fruit, a PBJ, and some chopped up carrots as I recall.