The PBA Lunchroom

Sometimes I like to make-believe that my children are mature beyond their years. Bordering on adult-hood.

OK, actually there are PLENTY of adults I have met in my lifetime who are not at all mature so I don't know why I would, even for a second, insinuate that being an adult = mature.

All this to say, the PBA are not always as mature as one might hope. They are darling and amusing and oh-so-bright. But not always mature.

I blame the y-chromosome. (My apologies to Mr. Always Random, my father, and any other y-chromosomes who may read this…I don’t REALLY mean it. Ok, maybe a little bit.)

I submit for your review the following evidence (and yes, you must plow through the back story...sorry, it's my gift and my curse):

Last week we were out of frozen chicken nuggets.

Oh the shock and horror of it. As you can imagine, it was MASS CHAOS at our house.

And yes, I am the bastion of quality food preparation. Clearly no artificial ingredients, preservatives, or fillers in the food I feed my family...

I was somewhat panicked because we’d been out for a few days and during soccer season, chicken nuggets are sometimes my fall-back dinner plan.

I’m not proud of this fact, but it is a fact.

And just to be clear, it’s not more than once a week, if that, in which I rely on the frozen chicken nuggets for a main course; if you do it more often than that, I want you to know that I don’t judge you for it.

Anyway, I noticed that Meijer had Tyson (oh, name-brand even!) chicken nuggets on sale for $3.99/bag.

And yes, I do still peruse the Meijer ad, even though I am now a loyal Aldi shopper.  And also even though Meijer no longer doubles coupons.

Sorry if you missed that memo from Meijer; they didn’t really advertise that fact. Consider yourself notified.

So…Meijer had frozen chicken nuggets for $3.99/bag. And I had 3 coupons for 75 cents off each. So clearly, even if you are no math major (such as I am not) $3.24 is cheaper than $3.99.

Of course I jumped on it. I may feed my family junk but at least I don’t spend a lot to do it.

The only caveat was that these coupons were specifically for “Fun Nuggets”.

If you have young children, or if you are completely unconcerned with what kind of crap (such as I, myself have apparently proven to be) you may be feeding your family, you’ll know exactly what it that is.

However, if neither of these stipulations apply to you, you may be asking yourself “What, pray tell, is a ‘Fun Nugget’”?

Always one for edification of myself and others, I shall tell you: It is a nugget seemingly shaped like a specific item, instead of the usual shapeless, unidentifiable blob.

The “Fun Nuggets” which Meijer had available were dinosaurs. That’s it. The only option.

In fact, it is the only “Fun Nugget” option I have ever seen, although I suppose there could very well be others.

So I bought the three bags of dinosaur-shaped (kind of…it’s open to interpretation) chicken nuggets and brought them home. At ages 10 and 12, I fully-anticipated that they would balk at the shapes: “Really, Mom?!? Dinosaurs? How old do you think we are?”

Imagine my delight when nothing was said about it. In fact, they were quite excited to see them in the freezer.

I assumed that it was simply that they were excited to find chicken nuggets in the freezer, regardless of the shapes.

I heard some giggling as I heard the microwave start. The giggling should have been my clue.

I strolled through the kitchen and saw nothing out of the ordinary, except katsup on the counter. My boys typically only eat katsup on French fries and maybe on burgers.

Never on chicken nuggets; they are mustard and ranch dressing (not at the same time) kind of kids.

Still didn’t think anything of it: “They must just be mixing things up today…”

I left the room and a couple minutes later, I heard loud laughter. And growling.

Growling? Really?

I went back in the kitchen to see that some of the dinosaurs had lost their heads in a horrific battle and were lying in pools of katsup (aka blood) on their plates. Others were simply in process of being eaten by the carnivores.

So mature.

However, I did grab a camera and took pictures. Once I stopped laughing. 

I’m really mature too. I blame all my time with these y-chromosomes.

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