Monday, November 30, 2009

Playing What If

Little Yankele's mom puts dinner down on the table and Yankele is not very happy. He pushes around the plate's contents with his fork. "I don't like this!" he cries. Yankele's mother wants him to eat so she asks him: "So, what would you like?" Yankele yells out, "hot dogs and steak and tuna fish and pancakes and chocolate chip cookies and zucchini and french fries and scrambled eggs and bagels and ice cream and an apple and spaghetti and orange juice!" Yankele's mother reasonably points out to him that he can't have all of that for one meal. But Yankele is not in the mood to be reasonable. "But that's what I want!" Yankele's mom's patience is beginning to fray and so she walks to the refrigerator and opens the door wide. She points inside. "You may have two things from in here, but only two." So Yankele walks over to the fridge and stares inside. "But mommy," he wails, " I want it all!"

Sound familiar? A scene like the one above seems to have played out in every home at least once. And every mom, at some point in her children's upbringing, has found herself explaining a true but often ignored maxim: "Alles in einim is nisht du bei keinem--no one has everything all at the same time."

So why is it that we adults keep having these "Yankele moments"?

4 comments:

NonymousG said...

Interesting analogy...

Tuvi said...

A lack of patience maybe? No one likes to wait and it seems like no one knows how to wait anymore. Watch people standing on a line and you can see how antsy they get after even two minutes.

Anonymous said...

Some people are just lousy decision makers and can really fret over making even small decisions because we are afraid of making mistakes - i.e. what dress to wear, what to get someone for a gift. Perhaps saying you want it all is the fear of making a bad decision.

Trudy said...

I think it could be just having too much to choose from.