Dec. 24: Bacon

Earlier this year, when I asked my son to give me a title for note-a-day, he said this: "Pig."

Yesterday, when I asked him to give me a title for note-a-day, he said this: "Bacon."

So, I'm kind of writing about the same thing.

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My kid loves bacon. Loves it. Adores it. It's his favourite thing. This I discovered a couple weeks ago when he and I got breakfast at a local drive-thru. I got him a plate of sausage and I got myself a plate of bacon and eggs. As soon as I lifted the top off my container, my kid grabbed the bacon and wolfed it down. He's autistic, doesn't completely grasp social norms, and, besides, he's been conditioned to think that he's entitled to do anything he wants with anything I own. (For example, he believes that my shoulders are a diving board.)

See that picture up there? That's basically my kid's favourite thing. I bought him a box the other day (bye bye $7) and he was delighted. I thought he might eat a couple slices and be done with it, but was I ever wrong? He ate the whole box. He would have eaten three boxes if I had them but I had to cut him off. Too many pork products in one sitting never did anyone any good, even if they are just seven years old.

Bacon is so amazing that even one of history's greatest poets, Robert Service, mentions it in his poem, The Shooting of Dan McGrew.* To wit:

And hunger not of the belly kind, that's banished with bacon and beans,

But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it means;

 And Denny's, that famous American diner franchise, had a real Jones going for bacon too. They did a big bacon thing on their menu for a while and they were offering - I kid you not - maple bacon sundaes.

No, I did not try them.

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* At this point, my mother will mention that her late father, my grandfather, adored this poem and used to recite it constantly.