Dear Flying Spaghetti Monster,
I am writing this letter to thank you for saving my son with the celestial touch of your noodly appendage. Since you are the creator of the universe and the master of all beings, you already know my son’s story. It is worth repeating if for no other reason than to give you the true recognition you deserve. Seeing as you don’t have hands or fingers, you may have trouble opening this letter. I hope the inconvenience does not cause delays in your saving of other people.
For several months upon first eating solid foods, my son gobbled pasta like it was the best food on earth. Which, as you know, it is. He was indiscriminate with his pasta tastes. He scarfed down spaghetti, ravioli, egg noodles and anything else made of dough and flour. He even ate play dough, thinking it was uncooked pasta I’m sure. It was evident he was in touch with his inner noodle.
Then one day my son stopped eating noodles. Just like that. At the sight of noodles he screamed and pushed his plate away. As a man who has been a lifelong member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and a devoted Pastafarian, this behavior was extremely troubling to me. No matter how I tried to coax and persuade him, he would not eat his noodles. I began to doubt my abilities as a father. I openly wondered if there was something I had done to upset Your Noodliness.
In my confusion and distress, I feared for my son and for what might happen to him for abandoning the values of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I was worried about how Your Noodliness would perceive our family now that our son had lost touch with his inner noodle, and had gone down a wayward path toward death and destruction.
Of course, had I been of a clearer mind, I would have realized that I had no need to worry.
The celestial touch of your noodly appendage would save my son just as it has saved millions, if not dozens, of souls around the world. There was no doubt that you would come to our aid in this crisis. After all, if you were able to create the universe and all things living in it, saving one small child from an untimely end would be no small meatball out of your clump of spaghetti.
And Your Noodliness did not disappoint us.
I remember the day well. As I was scraping yet another plate of untouched noodles into the compost bin, I looked up through tear-stained eyes and saw you hovering outside my kitchen window. I stared at you in wonder for a few moments, not knowing what to do or say.
I have to admit that until you revealed yourself in all your noodly glory, I was not entirely convinced of your existence. One of the many reasons I was initially drawn to Pastafarianism is that you openly embrace contradictions. Amazingly, I did not have to truly believe in you to become a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. While I appreciate that freedom to disbelieve, after having seen you with my own eyes I can say with clarity that all doubt of your existence has been erased forever.
Many of my friends and family openly mock me for believing in Your Noodliness.
I tell them of the day I saw you—a beautiful, giant clump of gnarled, wet spaghetti intertwined lovingly with two huge meatballs. They did not believe me. They tried to convince me that what I saw was an old plate of fettuccine dragged out of the compost by a raccoon and strewn across the neighbor’s bushes. Clearly they were not believers.
What happened next would remove any lingering doubt from even the most skeptical agnostic. You majestically reached your noodly appendage through the window and ruffled my son’s hair. You let some of the juice from your right meatball drip onto his forehead, and you allowed a few lose strands of spaghetti to drop onto the tray in front of him. Then with a wink of an eye and a jiggling of noodles you disappeared.
The celestial touch of your noodly appendage had immediate effect. My son wolfed down the noodles you left for him and, as would be expected after eating directly from Your Noodliness himself, he was an altogether changed person. You saved him from the wayward path of death and destruction and reconnected him with his inner noodle.
He begged for more noodles that meal, and to this day we struggle to meet his noodle demands. This of course is a minor inconvenience compared to what could have been. Thank you, Flying Spaghetti Monster, for reaching out and saving our son.
Ramen.
Yours truly,
A Devoted Pastafarian
—Photo top: pottymouth/Flickr bottom: EvelynGiggles/Flickr
About Jared Karol
Our kids love pasta. The little one especially loves macaroni and cheese. He’d eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner if we allowed him to. The big problem in our house is sauce. Butter on pasta? Yes. Cheese sauce? Please, more. Tomato sauce? NOOOoooooooooo!!!!! (Cue the kids running away from the table in horror.) The odd thing is that the oldest loves tomatoes. And they both like tomato sauce on their pizza. But put it on pasta and you’d think I was trying to serve them raw liver and brussel sprouts.
And don’t get me started on meatballs. My oldest has decided that he’s not eating cow anymore because he doesn’t like cows. Please don’t tell him what is in those all-beef franks he likes. Luckily, we’re mostly vegetarian in our house. (Mainly due to the fact that we keep kosher in our house and kosher meat is outrageously expensive. Cheaper to keep vegetarian.) Still, it limits his options when eating out.
I keep waiting for my boys’ culinary horizons to expand. I’m sick of them turning their noses up at anything that’s not in nugget form, on a crust with cheese, or drenched in manufactured cheese sauce. (Yes, I tried making my own healthier mac and cheese and yes they turned their noses up at it because it wasn’t like the boxed kind.)
It sounds like your kids have the same high “needs” that my kids have. One day (or one meal) they’ll eat the whole kitchen, sink and all, and the next, they won’t touch a thing. They used to at least try anything we ate, but now they’re a little more picky. You think you’ve found something they like, and the next meal the same food is chewed up in their hand and they’re saying, “No like. Garbage!”
I too keep waiting for the day they can appreciate some of the “finer” foods in life. It sounds like it might be a while though. . .
our son eats everything at daycare and nothing at home. don’t think we haven’t thought about the obvious here, but it wouldn’t work. we’d be caught and eventually tried for child abandonment.
however, he does like whole grain waffles with cinnamon, enjoys nitrate free (expensive of course) bacon, over easy eggs (not scrambled and easy to cook), crackers and the occasional bite of meat (occasionally my wife will force it in his mouth!)
apparently, nanny poppins can make anything taste magically delicious at her home, and Ma and Pa Kettle can only put salt in Squirrel Stew.
Karl
Karl,
This is hilarious. I mean from a purely literary “it’s not happening to me” point of view. Yeah, this pasta debacle is just one of the many things that I should know better than to try to figure out. He’s been back into pasta for a couple months now, and I’m sure it’ll jerk to a sudden stop any minute now. Squirrel Stew sounds delicious though. Can we come over for dinner?
And maybe instead of the child abandonment gig, you could just hire a full time nanny from the daycare? Cause that’s so cheap and all. . .
What does it mean if your child loves spaghetti and orzo, but hates fusilli, ravioli, penne, conchiglie, gemelli, rigatoni, ziti, farfalle, orecchiete, and all other pastas?
Is there a pastaverse in which that is acceptable?
Wow, Marghi, that is a delicate one you’ve got there. I’m going to have to consult the stars to see if that indeed is acceptable. My initial thoughts are that some pastaverses would be totally fine, while other more fundamental ones would strictly forbid it. I think, like any religion, you’re going to have to do some research and choose the sect that’s right for you.
Our 10 Year old girl has only recently admitted that she’s no longer allergic to Zucchini, but still hates it. It’s amazing what Hudson will eat though, and without any push from us. Pasta is always the golden challis when it comes to meals we don’t have to worry about selling to them.
Yeah, you’d think that you can never go wrong with pasta, but when we hit our refusal to eat pasta stage, it was really weird. Good thing the FSM was there to save us. Now both kids are back to normal. We don’t really have to sell it at all anymore. . .
Here’s a funny article about the flying spaghetti monster…
http://jigarbpatel.blogspot.com/2009/06/flying-spaghetti-monster.html