Settle in, folks - it's storytime. 

A long time ago (but not that long ago, because I'm not old at all ever no), my father sat down to watch a football game at approximately the same time my mother needed to go to the grocery store.

I was five, and a big girl. I told my mother this, and insisted I could stay home and watch the football with my daddy.

"You can keep an eye on her?" my mother quizzed my father, whose eyes were glued to the screen.

"Yeshuremmmhmmm," he replied, approximately, never looking up. To this day, given what transpired next, I'm pretty sure he never actually heard my mother.

I sat on the couch, watching my dad watch football. I cheered when he did, and cursed when he did.

"Shiii..." would come leaking out of his mouth.

"Damn it!" I'd second, and occasionally it would register that his five-year-old girlchild was sitting on the couch next to him.

"You have to be a lot taller to say that," he'd absentmindedly admonish.

"Damn it!" I'd say, standing on a kitchen chair I pulled into the living room.

I eventually got bored. I was five, and as far as I could tell, this was a boring, fruitless pastime that didn't even offer one Muppet to break up the monotony.

I went outside, where it had rained that morning. Standing there, surveying my outdoor cuisine making opportunities, I saw a dandy spot of mud.

And then I realized: I can really make a nice one.

Back into the kitchen I went. First, I pushed another chair up to the freezer, where I retrieved a frozen pie shell. The sugar jar was a little harder to snag, but I lugged that out.

In retrospect, I wonder that my dad never came out to investigate the noise. That jar was huge. My mother would have heard the initial thought as it rattled in my brain, and met me at the back door to tell me no. This much I know.

I mixed the mud and sugar in equal parts, stirring to a silky smoothness not unlike chocolate pudding. I poured my pie filling into the shell, and surveyed my work.

Still. Not. Good.

I walk back into the kitchen, and open the refrigerator door again. There, on the back of the very top shelf, I spy it. Cool Whip. And not just any Cool Whip. Virgin, unopened, pristine Cool Whip. Only, I couldn't get the plastic sleeve off to pull the lid.

I walked into the living room.

"Daddy?"

 "Hmmhmpfh...yeah?" was the reply.

"Can you open this?" I ask, handing him the  tub of non-dairy whipped topping in my tiny little hands.

"Sure," he said, pulling the hindrance off. "Here you go," he added, handing it back without ever looking at it.

Back outside I went, lovingly covering my mud pie with the creamy confection. After not getting very much mud in the tub, I put the lid back on, and carefully put it back in the fridge.

I looked back at my pie. It. Was. Good.

I pull out a table knife, and climb up on the counter for a plate. I cut my father a piece of my pie, and bring it to him to admire.

"Here, Daddy," I said, handing him the plate and fork.

"Thank you!" he said, with all the mock enthusiasm of a grown man just trying to watch a damned football game without a five year ol...oh wait, pie!

I watched, amazed, as my father brought the fork to his mouth. In my mind, now, the scene is replayed in slow motion as the pie crust laden with topping, mud and sugar makes it way to his lips, and then on to his tongue.

"Gahwhatthefu...THIS IS MUD!"

Cue my mother, walking in, arms laden with groceries. As she surveys the scene - me standing there with a plate of "pie," wide eyed, my father scraping mud off his tongue, the trail of sugar from the cabinets in the kitchen to the back door, the fridge door slightly ajar, she bit back a giggle.

"Um, what's the problem?" she asked, admirably nonchalant.

"YOUR DAUGHTER FED ME MUD. MUD. I PUT IT IN MY MOUTH AND EVERYTHING."

"Why would you take pie from a five year old?" my mother probed.

"I don't know!" he said, slouching back in his chair, ire deflated. "It looked like chocolate pie."

"And you thought our five year old suddenly produced a chocolate pie?" my mother teased.

"It just looked like one, that's all I'm saying," he grumbled, vowing never to eat anything I handed him again.

And nobody did, really, for a long, long time. Eventually, I'd actually learn how to cook with edible ingredients, and people actually ate them.  

But my first dish? My first, that mud pie, was both a failure and a triumph, depending on who you ask.