With two cheeks packed full of lima beans that weren’t getting any tastier, I dry-heaved. It was embarassing: most of the involuntary bodily functions never look that graceful to begin with, but factor in that it was dinnertime and I was surrounded by my famously well-behaved family – it looked particularly conspicuous. My cheeks reddened and little beads of sweat emerged on my forehead, and upper lip. I looked around. Maybe they hadn’t noticed. So far, so good. Just as I began mentally congratulating myself for slipping a near-barf past my parents, my sister Jenny snorted. She’d spotted the incident and couldn’t contain herself. I was now directly in the family spotlight. To my right, mom – who was looking at me like she’d just watched me punch a baby – began asking me why I couldn’t just swallow my food. On my left, my father furrowed his brow and, I’m sure, questioned the merits of sexual reproduction. I don’t know what I thought I was getting away with, but my body’s involuntary responses had ended my little charade. I was living a double-life at dinner, and the truth – very nearly – came spilling out.

“Charlie, eat your food.” My father was a real orator.

“Yes, and you’re not leaving the table until you’ve cleaned your plate,” Mom added. Jenny was watching the whole thing, giddy at the insane amount of good-child points that she was racking up at my expense. I pointed at an uneaten lima on her plate.

“But Dad, Jenny didn’t eat all her limas!”

“Am I talking to Jenny?” He wasn’t. It was definitely my lima-packed cheeks he was glaring at. Bear in mind that rhetorical questions in our house weren’t rhetorical at all. They required an answer, an indignity that I’ll never quite understand. I guess it has to do with parental confirmation, one of those so-we-know-they-understand-what-we’re-saying sort of things.

“No,” I muttered.

“Eat your food.” Dad looked at me and patiently waited. Defeated, I formed the greyish-green mass into a shape roughly the size of a Hacky Sack, and gulped the remaining lukewarm milk from one of the family glasses, the ones Mom always liked – simple, with the letter “P” etched into the side.

- Excerpt from Diary of An American Boy