This is something I wrote a while back. It’s more of a fun children’s story, but let me know what you think.
Eat Your Vegetables Elijah- By Neva Rodriguez
Mommy always asks me to eat my vegetables. She says they are good for me. Some of them are not so bad, but others taste horrible. Mommy tells me stories about the vegetables, to make them fun for me to eat. Her stories are okay, but the stories I imagine are better!
I try to imagine the things that mommy tells me, but when I imagine them, I imagine that I am on a roller coaster ride going through a massive garden. The wind nearly knocks off my baseball hat! Luckily I grab it just before the roller coaster does the loop the loop past a giant smoking barbeque grill. I see signs everywhere! The signs have words on them and pictures of carrots, broccoli and even spinach. Mommy starts the ride and stops it when it’s time to get off, and my little brother Anthony and I scream and yell the entire time we are sitting in the ride. Our car on the ride even has a table top on the front of it with a cup holder.
I imagine that my carrots are long microphones and start to sing into them like I see the singers do on television shows. Daddy laughs, but mommy looks mad, so I stop. Anthony starts doing the same thing five minutes later and I get into trouble! Can you believe that? Mommy suddenly stops yelling and says that carrots are good for our vision. I have no idea what she is talking about and when I ask what vision is, she tells me it is so that I can see better. This really confuses me. I look around the room and I think I can see alright, but can you imagine if carrots will help me see through walls? Whoa, that would be so cool! I would be able to see where my big sister Christina hides her cell phone.
My sister never lets me go into her room. She won’t even let me look in her room. I wonder, what is in there anyway. I bet that her closet is filled with giant candy bars and toys that I have never even seen before. She has posters on her walls of all of the kids that I see on TV. I wonder if they come out of the wall when she has the door closed. Can you imagine if I could see that? I would be so happy. I eat my carrots and my little brother Anthony does the same.
The next day at dinner, mommy puts small trees on the table. They are the smallest trees that I have ever seen! I begin to look through mine to see if I can find any monkeys or apes, but then mommy tells me that they are called broccoli.
“Oh,” I say.
I pretend like what she just told me explains it all, but really I am still wondering what they are.
“Here, you can put some cheese on the broccoli to make it taste better.” Mama says.
I look at the little cheese bowl and pour it onto my broccoli. It flows all over the broccoli and now I can see the monkeys running from their homes, and all around the plate! They are looking for bananas, but there are no bananas anywhere on the dinner table. I run to get some in the kitchen and quickly throw the entire bunch of bananas onto by plate of “broccoli cheese”.
“Elijah, what are you doing?” My big brother Nicholas screams and I immediately start to cry.
Mommy tells me to stop crying and to eat my broccoli. Can you believe that? I try to tell her about the monkeys, but they are gone now. I wonder if they are hiding in Anthony’s broccoli but when I try to check, Mommy yells at me. I don’t understand what she is so mad about? What if someone accidentally swallows one of the monkeys?
I imagine that I am in a boat on the great cheese river with my little brother. We are making our way into our big brother Nicholas’s room. It is a long trip and a little scary. It’s dark in there and he has some scary things on his wall. He painted his room black and neon green. Sometimes at night, I think that it glows. I will never try to go to find out, though. Something might come out of no where and eat me. I shudder at the thought.
I begin to wonder if the yellow light bulbs that mommy cuts into strips and puts into our tacos would light up if I took them downstairs. The next day at dinner, mommy makes tacos and I take one and put it under the table to check, but everyone notices what I am doing and mommy gets mad at me. My older brother and sister start laughing so hard that my little brother Anthony starts laughing too. His laugh is deep and loud and it makes me very angry.
I throw my taco at him. This really makes mommy mad and she tells me to go to my room. I get up and stomp my feet hard against the floor. I slam my door and sit down with my arms crossed against my chest. When mommy comes in to see what’s wrong with me, I tell her that I don’t understand why everyone gets so mad with me. I am just trying to eat my vegetables!
Mommy tells me that everyone is getting mad because I am making a big mess and making a scene at the dinner table. I’m not trying to make a mess, I want to explain to her, but when she talks about making a scene at the dinner table I imagine my vegetables performing in a play like Anthony did in preschool. I try to listen to what she is saying but it is no use, the vegetables talk louder and louder and louder until all that I hear is what they are saying.
Suddenly the play stops and we all get onto the dinner table roller coaster. We zoom through the garden again, only this time the ride is going slower and there are no loops. A giant squash in the front of the dinner table car gets up and starts explaining that vegetables need sunlight in order to grow, some more than others. The squash begins to tell us about tomatoes but then a Cucumber comes out of no where and begins to argue with him about if Mr. Tomato is a fruit or a vegetable.
“Tomatoes don’t grow in the ground like us, they grow on a vine.” The cucumber says.
It is interesting to watch the two of them argue, but I am getting very tired.
Mommy continues to talk about vegetables in the background, as my eyes begin to close. I try to keep them open, but the ride suddenly picks up speed and I have to try to hang on. I feel myself sinking further and further into my pillow as the ride comes to a screeching halt. Mommy covers me with a warm blanket and kisses me softly on my forehead. I decide that I will eat my vegetables tomorrow night before anyone else at the table does, so that way I can win the best prize ever, a giant steaming hot potato!
NEVA SQUIRES-RODRIGUEZ 