Clean your plate, there are starving children in China

[JitterbugPerfume]

when I was a kid my daddy used to bless the food at meal time . I was afraid to waste food > didn't want to piss off GOD .:dilemma:

[BikeWriter]

1. There are starving children in Appalachia and our slums.

[JitterbugPerfume]

2. yes,

that is sad but true

[JitterbugPerfume]

3. actually it is a memory of my father

that is sixty years old



long time passing

[skygazer]

4. When I was a kid, it was Biafra

Or India. I thought it would make more sense to mail them my leftovers - why make me eat it? But mom never liked that response.

[Oeditpus Rex]

9. That's what I always thought

(It was China in my house.)

But I never had the presence of mind to give 'em the "Send 'em this" response.

And even if I had, I wouldn't have had the guts. "Hitting" was sometimes a course not on the menu at our house.

[Richard Steele]

5. Trudeau had an awesome Doonesbury strip about that in the 70s...

Uncle Duke, US Ambassador to China, is eating
dinner at the home of a Chinese official,
who has the following exchange with his young son:

Official: "Teng, you haven't finished your jellied duck's web."

Child: (whiney) "But father, I don't _LIKE_ jellied duck's web!"

Official: (upset) "Disobedient child! You dishonor your family!
Children in West Virginia go to bed with no supper at all!"

Child: (contrite) "I...I'm sorry, father. I didn't know."




Its funny, and sad, because it's TRUE.

[oneighty]

6. Time is relative to the beholder

So is hunger. All children are precious. It is their leaders that are pricks.

180

[Richard Steele]

10. Very well stated, my friend! nm

[oneighty]

11. Hey dicksteel

180

[JitterbugPerfume]

12. I think it was because

Mom and daddy had lived through the depression and thought it was a sin to waste


incidentally , so do I

[Richard Steele]

17. Neither of my parents experienced the Great Depression...

But they both grew up in poor rural families with 7+ children
living on a single blue-collar paycheck.

Waste wasn't a 'sin' to them, it was an entirely alien concept.
WASTE was something that rich folks did, in newspaper stories and trashy novels.

Sure, they had 'garbage'...
But garbage that would ROT went onto the garden,
and garbage that would BURN went into the furnace...

And garbage that neither rotted nor burned wasn't really GARBAGE,
and was set aside until a use was found for it.

And if you keep ANYTHING long enough,
you WILL find a use for it.

[NewJeffCT]

19. That's not far from the truth

My wife was born in China during the "Great" cultural revolution (she calls it that, and I ask her, "why was it so great?")

and basically she told me that they were taught when they were young that they were working so hard so they could help to feed all the poor in America and other places, too.

[Deja Q]

7. I haven't wasted anything as small as a seed in a LONG time.

:)

[bertha katzenengel]

8. With my mom, it was Japan. She was an army brat, stationed there during

the US occupation after WWII. I guess she saw a lot of starving kids in Japan. How sad. Surely she never saw the illogic of her comments.

[DS1]

13. Just EAT IT!! eat it.. EAT IT!! ... eat it OPEN UP YOUR MOUTH AND FEED IT

Have some more yogurt, have some more spam
It doesn’t matter it it’s fresh or tanned
Just eat it, eat it, eat it, eat it
Don’t you make me repeate it
Have a banana, have a whole bunch
It doesn’t matter what you had for lunch
Just eat it, eat it, eat it, eat it
Eat it, eat it, eat it, eat it

[JitterbugPerfume]

14. LOL

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: I love Weird AL

[EstimatedProphet]

15. I always asked why didn't we send what we didn't want to eat to China

[NNadir]

16. Sometimes I want to say that to my kids too.

Sometimes I think the reason I'm such a fat fuck has to do with the fact that I feel morally compelled to clean my plate.

[yellowdogintexas]

18. at my house it was "think of the starving Armenians", which is

what my grandmother said to my mom when she was a kid and would not clean her plate.

[Blue_Tires]

20. in my home, it was always Ethiopia

[HEyHEY]

21. My parents never used that line, they just smacked us

[CBHagman]

22. It's time for Allan Sherman.

http://www.lyricsdownload.com/allan-sherman-hail-to-thee-fat-person-lyrics.html

Hail To Thee, Fat Person

I would like to explain how it came to pass that I got fat.

Ladies and gentlemen, I got fat as a public service.
When I was a child, my mother said to me,
"Clean the plate, because children are starving in Europe."
And I might point out that that was years before the Marshall Plan
was ever heard of.
So I would clean the plate, four, five, six times a day.
Because somehow I felt that that would keep the children from starving
in Europe.
But I was wrong. They kept starving. And I got fat.

So I would like to say to every one of you who is either skinny
or in some other way normal--
When you walk out on the street, and you see a fat person,
Do not scoff at that fat person. Oh no!
Take off your hat. Hold it over your heart.
Lift your chin up high. And in a proud, happy voice say to him,
"Hail to thee, fat person!
You kept us out of war

[shugah]

23. it was india at our house

and i was a smartass even then. "here, you can send them this."

we also heard "eat your vegetables, it'll make hair grow on your chest." i'm not sure how old i was when it ocurred to me that maybe i didn't want hair to grow on my chest ;-) whenever i did figure it out, i decided that i would tell my children to "eat your veggies, it'll make something grow on your chest." which i do tell them, by the way. they are boys, so they have probably decided to revert to the "hair" statement when they have kids. ;-)

i've never tried the "children starving in xxx" line on them because i know they both would offer to send whatever was on their plate - the older because he is a smartass (just like his mother ;-) ) and the younger because he would be sincerely concerned about those poor starving children.

:hi: Jitterbug! :loveya:

[Lilith Velkor]

24. Drink up, children are sober in Europe

:beer:

[auntAgonist]

25. starving children around the world ..

That was my parent's line. SO I ate everything on my plate and cleaned up leftovers too! Put on huge amounts of weight, took it off again , then put it on again .. then ... well you get the idea. I learned to serve food in bowls when I had my own family, the only rule was don't take too much that you can't finish it. Serving yourself and letting your kids serve themselves always works better imho.

:hi:

[unsavedtrash]

26. as a teen I got: drink your coffee, there are sleeping people in India

I'm not sure where mom picked that up.