When I was a kid, my parents only ate dinner with the kids or twice a week. Most of the time they went to my grandparents' place for dinner, since they lived down the street.

My brother and I would eat at home by ourselves, and our nanny would cook us dinner. I was a notoriously slow eater as a kid. It would take me an hour or more to finish dinner. Often they threatened to take the food away if I didn't eat faster. Once the nanny tied me to the chair with plastic string to stop me from wandering off. But whenever my parents took me out to a restaurant or to my grandparents' house with them, I wolfed food down.

My parents were baffled by this. The kid eats fine at restaurants. Why's she so picky at home? They tried discipline, they tried not feeding me. Finally at the age of nine, my mom got one of those sticker charts and told me I had to finish dinner within 45 minutes for a 100 days in a row to win a toy. It worked. I trained myself to shovel food down my throat like my dad does. (I swear, the man doesn't even chew.)

But now I think back on it, I think I was such a slow eater at home because the nanny was a horrible cook. I mean, stir fried cucumber chunks? Ew... I also used to find cold, raw English muffins in my lunch box at school. Took so long for me to eat I barely had any time to play at recess.

But since any admission of childhood misbehavior on this forum is invariably followed by accusations of being a stinking lously excuse of a brat and possibly a spoiled, entirled, whiny, selfish and dissolute adult as well, I shall pre-empt you all by declaring:

YES! My parents didn't beat me enough! You got a problem with that?