How did your parents manipulate you to make parenting easier?

When I was young, my parents bought home this very fancy maple syrup from Toronto,

and I fell in love with it.

We used it a few times, and then they told me it had run out, so we were using a normal version like Aunt Jemima's or something.

Apparently, I threw a temper tantrum.

From then on, I'd be a little monster if we didn't

use the expense of syrup. Today we made waffles while I was visiting home for a week and my mom

mentioned how she had just put Aunt Jemima's back into the fancy maple syrup bottle and how I'd always say

something like, see, mum, I can taste the difference. For ten years, my parents have been laughing at my

jerkishness. When I was a kid, we'd take long family trips to Ohio to visit my grandparents.

I absolutely loved these trips. My grandparents had all sorts of cool stuff in the house,

two big apple trees in the front yard, and they lived next to a train track. My grandpa also loved

Golden Graham's. Every time my brothers and I would visit, he'd open his cupboard to reveal

four or five boxes of Golden Graham's, explaining how much he loved them and that he got extra

boxes just because we were visiting. I always thought it was so cool that my grandpa, who was,

you know, old, had the same favorite

cereal as me.

I'd always feast on cereal every time we went to visit.

Of course, years after he died, I was relating this story to someone, and the obvious dawned

on me.

Later I asked my mother if grandpa even liked Galton Graham's, and she got this big smile on her

face, looked a little sad, and said,

...