If you’re like me, you have two daughters aged 6 and 9, and they don’t like spicy food. Whenever you feed it to them, they take one tiny bite, and then run around the room screaming “my mouth is on fire like Satan’s balls!!!” and the rest of their food goes to waste.

The only way my girls will develop a thick, leathery, protective skin on their tongues like Dear Old Dad is if I find a way to keep feeding them spicy food until they’re completely desensitized, and everything else they eat tastes like soggy cotton. So here’s what I’ve done: I’ve made a Daddy Decree that in our house, instead of using the word “spicy,” we’ll use the word “yummy.”

spciy

So far, it’s worked like a charm. I fed my eldest daughter a Jamaican patty the other day because I’m a dirtbag, and I asked her how she was enjoying it. “It’s … yummy,” she answered through watery eyes. “In fact, I think it’s a little too yummy for me.”

Take that, tastebuds! Score one for Dear Old Dad.