This letter is to inform you that your children arrived at our hospital in the back of an ambulance a few days ago. A team of our best doctors and nurses have done everything they could. Do not fret, your children will survive. But I should warn you that when children suffer a serious case of food poisoning like this one they never recover completely.
We sent a health inspector to the grandparent's house where the children were staying for their summer holidays. The inspector found that the kitchen cupboards and refrigerator were empty. No, sorry, the inspector has just entered my office and corrected me. The kitchen cupboards and refrigerator were full -- but not with anything the children could eat!
The cupboards were stuffed with thousands of things that should have been in a museum of useless inventions. The refrigerator was full of jars of coloured water. Opening one of the jars caused the health inspector to faint. Apparently the greenish stuff in the jar was water that Grandma had boiled some broccoli (a vegetable) in a long, long, loooooonng time ago.
We had to send another health inspector. The first one got sick!
Our second health inspector refused to go into the house, but she did interview some neighbours down the street. She discovered that Grandpa has gone senile. He thinks that he is still living in the age of the "ice box". He only buys the family enough food for one meal when he goes to the grocery store. He simply refuses to believe that fresh food can be safely kept in a refrigerator for more than a few hours without going bad. But strangely, he thinks it is perfectly all right to keep leftovers in the refrigerator for months at a time before he eats them.
Apparently Grandpa goes to the grocery store every day. He always buys the same things, whether the family needs them or not. That might explain why there are so many jars of mustard and barbecue sauce in the house, but no food to put them on. There was not even a slice of bread so that the children could make themselves a mustard sandwich when they get hungry.
Talking to the neighbours, the health inspector discovered that Grandma is the undisputed boss of the house. She must think that she is playing a modified version of the children's game "King of the Castle".
(You must have seen children play this game. This is the game where a child climbs up on top of something, such as a pile of snow or a swimming raft, and then tries to prevent other children from climbing on. A lot of pushing and shoving takes place as the children wrestle for control of the "castle". Our doctors and nurses are kept very busy treating the cuts and bruises that children sometimes suffer as a result of playing this game.)
The neighbours call Grandma's version of the game "Queen of the Kitchen" since Grandma spends most of her day in the kitchen doing nothing more than chasing everyone else "OUT OF MY KITCHEN!"
Grandma told the health inspector that she quit her "seaweed only" diet a few months ago. She said she liked seaweed but was not able to buy it anymore now that the local health food store has closed. The store owners retired and moved to Florida.
Next Grandma tried a "moon dust" diet. She admitted that she ate many mouthfuls of moon dust before she realized that the moon is not made of cheese. Now she is on a lightly pan fried tofu patties diet with eight glasses of water per meal. When asked, Grandma admitted that she uses the toilet a lot more frequently now.
It was Grandma's youngest son that the health inspector found to be the strange one in the family. He is the father of some of the children and an uncle to your children. He was trying to live on a rabbit's diet. I do not mean that he ate rabbits! No, he tried to eat like a rabbit! He would nibble on a few carrots, some lettuce, and possibly some peas in Grandma's vegetable garden every time he passed by. This might have been okay except that he wanted the children to live on the same diet!
When Uncle Rabbit arrived at Grandma's house for his summer holidays he told Grandma to feed the children nothing but salads. Grandma liked this idea since it tasted much better than her moon dust diet. Grandpa liked this idea too since now he could go to the grocery store every day and not have to buy anything at all. Grandma picked all of the things for the salad from her garden.
The children did not like Uncle Rabbit's diet at all! Salad for breakfast. Salad for brunch. Salad for lunch. Salad for afternoon tea. Salad for dinner. Salad for supper. Salad for bedtime snack. Salad, salad, salad! Always the same. A big pile of lettuce leaves. A baby carrot. A thin slice of cucumber. "Just one. Now mind your manners." And on Wednesdays maybe some celery or a radish if the children were good.
One day an aunt and uncle came to visit when Grandma and Grandpa were too tired to look after the children. The aunt and uncle took the children on a boat trip and bought them a pizza. The children liked the aunt and uncle very much.
The next day the children found some small pieces of tomato and green pepper in their salad. Grandma said they must have fallen out of the pizza box.
You may be wondering where Grandpa's oldest son was during all of this. When he arrived on his summer holidays he found no food in the house. When Grandma saw him she insisted that he go on a "water only" diet because he was bigger than anyone else. Unable to eat -- since Grandma was ferociously guarding her kitchen -- he did what many hungry mammals do every winter. He fell asleep from a lack of energy and began to hibernate.
The poor uncle nearly starved to death before he finally woke up. His stomach was growling much too loudly for him to sleep any longer. He opened the refrigerator door and searched all of the kitchen cupboards. Again he found nothing in the house to eat. Oh there were some starving children and dieting adults in the house, but he decided that they were all too bony to nibble on. He called the ambulance that saved your children.
As I stated in the first paragraph of this letter, your children are nearly okay now. They have been looked after very well by our doctors and nurses. Did you know that our doctors and nurses are some of the best cooks in the world for children's cuisine? Your children have eaten every gourmet meal the doctors and nurses have prepared without leaving behind a single crumb. The doctors and nurses have found that feeding the children has been great practice for their up coming world championship cooking competition.
The children are ready to be sent home. My doctor's prescription states that the children are to eat lots of hot dogs, hamburgers, potato chips, pizza, milk, lemonade, ice cream, popsicles and chocolate chip cookies for the next few years. Oh, and a nurse has just reminded me to include bonfire roasted marshmallows as a treat every summer evening.
I realize that only two of the children are yours, but would you please come and take all of the children home with you? We have not been able to find anyone else to take care of the other children.
The other parent, Uncle Rabbit, is unable to care for the children as he is now hospitalized. Apparently, while he was sniffing around the vegetable garden some bees became upset and attacked him. With his nose all puffed up and his eyes swollen shut by bee bites Uncle Rabbit is now in no condition to look after anyone.
Grandma and Grandpa have been released from hospital on the condition that they go back to school and learn about the Canada Food Guide and proper nutrition. Their teacher reports that Grandpa is trying his best but he does not listen to the teacher very well. He is nearly deaf. Meanwhile, Grandma is always in trouble at school because she is very stubborn and refuses to learn. She thinks that she knows best and the teacher knows less.
We have tried contacting all of the other aunts and uncles and found that most of them have just finished their summer holidays and are going back to work. None of them are able to look after the children. According to our public health nurse that may be a good thing. She found many of the aunts and uncles to be too thin, bony, frail and prematurely grey to look after healthy, active children. She is convinced that many adult members of your family must be suffering some form of dieting disease that has effected their ability to reason and use common sense with regards to proper nutritional eating.
I do not think that our public health nurse, or either of our two health inspectors, developed much of a rapport with your adult relatives. The only one they thought may still be sane was the hibernating uncle. They quickly changed their minds though when they discovered that he has voluntarily left the comforts and excitement of big city living to go teach and live in rural, northern Saskatchewan. No one moves to Saskatchewan! He must be mentally deranged! But clearly it is a different type of mental illness than the debilitating "I am going to starve myself thin" disease the other adult members of your family are suffering from.
To prepare you for the worst I have included some pictures of the children. You will notice that the cooking by our doctors and nurses have allowed the children to regain a healthy weight, although their growth and development is delayed by a few months. Brain functioning has slowed down to that of a vegetarian but hopefully it will speed up as the children eat some meat.
Unfortunately the change in skin colour is permanent! When a child is force fed too many salads their skin pigment changes colour. This is an environmental adaptation. There is nothing our doctors can do about it.
We have tried to explain the change in their skin colour to the children by comparing them to arctic hares and arctic foxes. The fur of both of these animals changes to white during the winter time to match the colour of their snowy environment. We have also tried using the example of bugs, which are often the same colour as the food they eat to help camouflage them from their enemies. The children did not like being compared to bugs at all! But the children kind of look like oversized salad eating bugs, do you not agree? I certainly think so.
Would you be willing to allow our doctors to use your children as guinea pigs in some future medical experiments? I know you will agree so we will begin immediately.
