The Tale of Broccoli

There once was a boy who disliked broccoli very, very much indeed.

Half of his older siblings obediently ate broccoli as told and pretended to like it even though they very, very much did not.

The other half of his older siblings refused to eat broccoli and instead ate salads and the occasional piece of cake when Dad was feeling generous.

Since the young boy did not like broccoli, he followed his older siblings who ate salad instead, a mixture of many greens and cucumbers and radishes and tomatoes and carrots and all sorts of yummy bunny food.

One day, the older siblings who obediently ate broccoli, even though they very much did not like it, stuck around the dinner table after eating supper.  The boy started to get up, but they hammered him back into his chair.  They seemed very cross and the boy was confused and frightened.

The other older siblings, the ones who ate salad, wanted to intervene, but they were also younger and weaker than the obedient broccoli-eating siblings.  Fearful, too, they could only look on.

"Eat," demanded the broccoli eaters, even though they very much did not like it but still pretended to, with scorn.

"No," the boy refused.

"Eat it," they screamed!

They boy wanted to run.  Why they were so insistent on him doing something so trivial and pointless baffled him greatly, but he knew that giving in to them was the last thing he wanted to do.  That they were bullying him into eating broccoli that he very much did not want to eat was all the more reason why he would never, ever eat it.

"No," he cried out, and tried to bolt.

They nailed him back down and began shoving the broccoli into his mouth, forcing it down his throat against his will while they held him down.  The boy vomited all over himself.

"Oh, how disgusting!  Look at how gross you are, you little turd," derided the older siblings, as they finally released him.

They boy ran, weeping, to the bathroom to shower and let the water rain down and cleanse him.  They laughed at him all the way and then went to the gym to do Pilates.

They never felt sorry.  They never felt compassion.  They kept trying, relentlessly, to compel the boy to obey their command for 40 days, because they felt so ordained.  They placed broccoli under his pillow every night.  They threw broccoli at his back wherever he went.  They would interject the word "broccoli" into sentences just to unnerve him.  They were a cruel lot and were dead in heart.

That's it.  That's all I had.  If you thought there was more to the story, there isn't.  Sorry if that was a little abrupt and kind of a letdown.  Life's kind of like that sometimes, isn't it?

Well, OK, I can give you this: