different is not inherently damaging. different is simply different, and without differences, well... we'd all be the same.

back in the day, elvis used to be our go-to babysitter for mini-me. he exhibited a modicum of good sense, had a working vehicle, and aside from the second-hand smoke, was a relatively good influence. one of mini-me's prevailing memories of their time together was that elvis would buy her ice cream for breakfast. see, elvis is a big coffee drinker, so he'd take her to some joint to get his coffee fix, and while there would get her some ice cream. she loved it.

did we care that he was allowing her to have ice cream for breakfast? well, hell no. in the first place, i had already fed her an actual breakfast, no doubt something with a great deal of redeeming nutritional value such as a poptart. so it's not like she was depending on elvis to provide an actual meal. in the second place, it's not like they did this every day. it obviously occurred more than once, presumably on a sort of semi-regular basis, but the simple fact is that mini-me was not with elvis every day for years on end. if anything, this happened a few times over the course of that summer elvis made his home on a mattress in our front room.

while not being necessarily beneficial, ice cream for breakfast is not detrimental, either. every single meal and snack does not have to be analyzed, planned, and examined. sometimes it's possible to eat something simply for fun. having ice cream for breakfast was a wee bit of rebellion for mini-me. labelling the consumption of snack foods before noon as "rebellion" should tell you everything you need to know about the general length of the leash we kept mini-me on. yeah, we were quite the tyrants. ::roll eyes::

but really, the most important thing here is the trust between me & my old man & elvis that allowed this relationship between elvis & mini-me. elvis knew the limits. it's not like he was putting her in a knife-juggling act. we knew that whatever happened, he'd put her safety & well being first. beyond that - it just doesn't matter. nothing he could have fed her, no place he could have taken her, nobody he could have introduced her to... nothing he could have done wrong, really, because he put her safety first.

elvis has a way of doing things that is different from the way we do things, and that's okay. different is not inherently damaging. different is simply different, and without differences, well... we'd all be the same.

everything else is just gravy, see? it doesn't matter. if you trust someone you love to keep your kid safe, if you really trust that person, you will understand that it doesn't matter WHAT they do together - it will all be good.

so, now when elvis & priscilla leave beavis with me & my old man, we feed beavis blueberries and we don't make him wear pants.

and that, my dear readers, that is the circle of life.