Drunk

The kids recently acquired a mother lode of juice boxes from the school lunch program. We don't often drink juice at our house. It's kind of a "special occasion" drink. It's popular with the school lunch program, though, because it counts as a fruit, it's fantastically shelf-stable, and it provides exactly the right amount of Vitamin C (one of the few nutrients they have to monitor and report on to get federal funding). I totally understand their reasoning. It makes sense! But still, my kids aren't used to it.

When we received the juice boxes (10 per child!! That's 40 fl oz), I gave each child control over their own stash. I'm a pretty diligent food cop, but this wasn't something I wanted to monitor for them. And I was curious to see how they would handle it.

The very next day, James challenges Matthew to a drinking contest.

They have a contest to see who can drink four juice boxes the fastest. This is AFTER James has already consumed several boxes of juice throughout the morning.

James slurps down his first two boxes real fast, then takes a "break" to let Matthew catch up a little. He tells me, feeling magnanimous, "I want him to feel like he's doing a good job. Like he might win."

Matthew is not a big eater. Never has been. He finishes his first box of juice and sighs, "This is hard." James loudly tries to encourage him. Robert overhears the friendly banter and comes over to investigate. A contest? With JUICE?! He's totally in. He pulls out four juice boxes of his own and downs all four in a row as James desperately tries to beat him. Robert walks away beaming. Victory! James slinks off his chair, gets a blanket, and curls up on the couch. For an hour. I thought he was sad about losing, so I asked him about it. He was actually pretty excited for Robert. That was a truly astonishing win and James and Matthew were both impressed. No, James says he's lying on the couch because his tummy feels crummy. Matthew is doing the same thing on the other couch. Both have clearly hit their drinking limit.

James then swears off apple juice for the rest of his life.