Brussel Sprouts

I remember as a child, my mother lecturing me about the starving black babies in Africa and how much they would appreciate the vegetables that I was nudging reluctantly around my plate. I would have willingly offered up my Brussel Sprouts to them. I hated them.
Now, here I was, giving the same lecture, and like before, it was falling on deaf ears.
He dug around in his bowl, finding a choice morsel here and there, and spilling the rest onto the floor.
“There are poor babies in Africa …” I ranted.
The parrot chewed on a sunflower seed, oblivious.