Mermaid Salad

Being three apparently has a lot of advantages I hadn't thought of before. We were at the dinner table the other day eating ham, which Mommy and Daddy were enjoying with a spot of mustard and a little horseradish, when Sydney insisted that she also needed to have some mustard and horseradish. Leaning on our past experiences with this child we were pretty sure that she didn't like either, and told her so.

"Three year olds like mustard," she said. And they do. They like horseradish too, it turns out. Plain, with no ham to interfere.

So my little gourmand came into the kitchen with her toy elephant last night explaining that she and the elephant were hungry and they wanted to go to a restaurant.

"Okay," I said, playing the role of the waiter, "what do you and the elephant want?"

"I want a peanut butter and samwich," she said, clearly, "and the elephant wants mermaid salad."

Don't blink, I thought, and said, "Does he want a mermaid salad sandwich or just mermaid salad?"

"Just mermaid salad, please."

So Sydney had a peanut butter sandwich and the elephant ate his mermaid salad.

A little while later she came up to me and asked: "Excuse me, how do you make mermaid salad?"

I have no idea. "First," I said confidently, "you catch some mermaids."

"Yeah?"

"Then you cut the tails off."

"Why?"

"Because that's the part you eat. Then you cook them for 35 minutes, and you put them in a big bowl."

"Yeah?"

"And then you add mayonnaise, onions, celery, pepper and salt." Essentially I have just subsituted mermaid for tuna. Yummy.

"Oh!" Sydney said, "My elephant is still hungry. Can he have some more?" And off she went with more mermaid salad for her elephant.

But what have I done? Is she going to traumatize some little girl with a Little Mermaid t-shirt by making yum yum noises at it? Is she going to ask her pre-school teachers if they can make mermaid salad? Have I altered my daughter's experience with half-fish, half-human mythological creatures for life? Or is she really just skipping all that and admitting that all they may be good for is a substitute for tuna salad?

I wish I was three... I'd probably know the answer.