The Debate Over "Yogurt Whimsy"
And working within a food budget.
For many years, I’ve bought Trader Joe’s Squishers, also known as “yogurt sticks” in our house. They’re like the popular Go-gurt brand: tubes of yogurt, often consumed by little kids. And that was our purpose also. I’d tuck them into the kids’ lunch boxes (with an ice pack to keep them cold).
This summer, my youngest, 8 years old, has decided that she no longer cares for yogurt sticks. She prefers the much-larger yogurt cups. And with that, I no longer had a reason to buy yogurt sticks and instead started buying yogurt cups.
This made my 14-year-old mad. He says the yogurt cups aren’t as good as the yogurt sticks. I pointed out that this was probably because yogurt sticks have more sugar to appease little kids.
Plus, he consumes an enormous amount of yogurt sticks. Each stick is only 2 ounces of yogurt. A yogurt cup has double that. I’d find a pile of empty yogurt stick tubes on the coffee table because he consumed half a box in a single sitting. (Separate problem that he did not throw the tubes away.)
Yesterday, we were grocery shopping and he, once again, asked for yogurt sticks. I told him that he’s welcome to buy them with his allowance, and he said no — he wanted me to buy them out of our food budget.
He was still grumbling when we got back to the car. He said, “I NEED YOGURT STICKS. YOU HAVE NO WHIMSY. ASK YOUR THREADS PEEPS. THE INTERNET WILL AGREE WITH ME.”
I should point out that he wasn’t actually angry — he said this with a grin on his face. But he was also very convinced that if I posted his plight on the internet, he would be vindicated.
So I did:
Hundreds of comments later, the internet rendered its verdict…. and sided with me.
I read some of the comments aloud to my 14-year-old:
“Yogurt whimsy? In this economy??
“Teach your kid to put sprinkles in a yogurt cup like the 90s and he too will know the whimsy of yogurt.”
“He can get a job and buy his own yogurt whimsy.”
“More money and more waste. Sorry, kid, I’m on mom’s side.”
He laughed and conceded that he was not going to win the Battle of Yogurt Whimsy against me.
Of course, there are always haters on the internet. One woman commented, “He’s only with you a short time. Let him have the yogurt whimsy, FFS.” (It was the FFS that got me). I replied that I’m trying to teach him how to stay within a food budget when we grocery shop. She came at me again, and then I blocked her because I don’t need to fight with strangers on the internet.
Later that evening, as we were telling this story to the rest of the family, my 16-year-old said that the 14-year-old’s mistake was suggesting that I ask Threads for an opinion. The 16yo said, “Do you know who is on Threads? People like Mommy. You should have had her post this to the ‘Am I the Asshole’ subreddit.”
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