I had no idea I was weird

Growing up in a health food store was completely taken for granted while I was young. I figured everyone took a handful of vitamins daily, drank liquid garlic when they had a cold, and chewed up cod liver oil softgels. I had no idea I was weird.

My little Momma and Mimi love to tell this story of the time we had a visitor come over when I was 5 or 6. I remember Mimi telling me to ask him if he would like anything to drink. So I went up to him and said, “Would you like anything to drink? We have water and chlorophyll.” Apparently this dude didn’t regularly drink chlorophyll the way we did…or at all for that matter. I had no clue!

My step-mom loves to laugh at the years when we were still young and all still learning to live as two different families raising the same kids. My brother and I would spend our weekdays living at my Mimi’s, taking our acidophilus, drinking our Cali tea, and taking what we called “Number Sixes” (Kali Phos Cell Salts) before bed each night to help us settle down. Holly, my beloved step-mom, had not been indoctrinated into the world of homeopathic medicine quite yet and was just trying to figure out how to be an instant mom, so our request for “Number Sixes” before bed on the weekends had her freaked out and thinking we were being drugged to sleep.

As I got older I began to realize that some of our family remedies and practices were different. When other kids got stomach aches they drank Pepto or took a Tums. I drank aloe vera or apple cider vinegar water. When other kids caught a cold they took Robitussin. I took echinacea, goldenseal, garlic, cod liver oil, and grapeseed extract. Other kids would unpack their lunchbox and pull out ham sandwiches on white fluffy bread, bags of chips, soda, and candy bar. I would unpack stinky tuna on dense Ezekiel bread, carob covered raisins, and trailmix.

I even forget sometimes that even though so much has changed in our world and my lunch back then looks a lot like what you would pay a premium for at Starbucks, I am still wierd. Our 2 year old monster child got a pretty bad stomach bug not too long ago and I was terrified I was going to get it so I started drinking bentonite clay in my water. I didn’t even consider how weird that is until a friend was over for dinner and I pulled out my bentonite and made myself a little clay cocktail and her eyes almost popped out of her head. I tried explaining over fits of laughter why it’s not weird and how it absorbs toxins but let’s face it…I put dirt in my water.

These days I watch my own kids struggle through the weirdness. They are pretty cool with being weird at home but at school they are all about the junk. Addie is obsessed with taking Ramen for lunch even though there are homemade leftovers in the fridge. And Jack would rather not even bother packing a lunch and just buy something out of the awful vending machine. It kills me. But for now I’ll take it. I know that I came back to my healthy roots. They will too.