​On a good day, children have bizarre and borderline disgusting eating habits. When it comes to condiments, mine go off the charts.

My youngest son will demand ketchup, and ketchup alone, at a restaurant. I went through half of a bottle at Denny's once trying to keep him from causing a scene. He has also eaten an entire cup of cocktail sauce while claiming it was ketchup.

My oldest son, I saw him dip a piece of fruit in BBQ sauce then proceed to wolf it down. If I thought long enough, I might be able to come with a fruit that might work with that. But this was watermelon.

I probably just need to fight back a little, with a little gross-out of my own. Perhaps I'll serve up their plates of ketchup and BBQ-melon, and I'll have a heaping plate of mayonnaise.

​A recent event in Pittsburgh featured an appearance by Jonathan Ke Quan, better known to folks in my generation as either Data from Goonies or Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

All I could think about is how often he's asked to say the one-liners from those movies. That has to suck for him. His acting career fizzled out a few decades ago, and now he's just the guy who informs Indy that there are, in fact, no more parachute(s) aboard the plane.

Does he flat out refuse those requests? Does he fire a set of toy teeth into your crotch if you ask? Does he make a fast escape, shooting oil from the back of his shoes?

Jonathan, if you're out there, let me know. I'd love to know how the fame of Short Round has treated you over the years.

If I could go back in time, I would love to sit down at the meeting where toy executives gave the thumbs up on some of the designs of the first generation of Transformers.

"Yeah, let's just go with that. I mean, kids won't care if their toy doesn't even closely resemble the character on the show."

I'm looking at you, guy who approved the design of Ironhide.

One can only imagine the scorn heaped upon unsuspecting parents who purchased that toy by their discontented child. The thing cost $15 in 1984 ($1.6 million in today's dollars, judging the value of money by the way my mom refused to buy them back then.)

It was a travesty. A mockery of the intelligence of children. At least Megatron looked like a real gun (and apparently had a healthy libido as a robot). Luckily, my mother never bought me the Ironhide toy, but I had a friend who had him. He's a serial killer now, or probably at least poorly-adjusted.

Cartoon makers take heed - never draw anything for your animated show that cannot be made into a toy. Heed the tale of Ironhide.

When school gets cancelled or delayed because it is too cold, a funny thing happens. 

Parents who normally are overprotective (and overbearing) talk about how that never happened when they were kids and that kids aren't tough nowadays. It's funny to me because these are the very same parents who might be largely responsible for any lack of "toughness" in today's youth.

When we went to school, there were no parents who would sue the school district for making us wait for the bus in cold weather. When we went to school, we actually rode the bus, come to think of it. You got dropped off at school by an irritated parent if you missed the school bus.

When we went to school, we ate the hell out of gluten, peanut butter and eggs. Kids were only allergic to bee stings back then. Snow days were a rare thing, but no one had to scramble for child care. We had it nice. You stayed at home with mom or went to grandma's house.

And most importantly, by the time we went to school, they figured out how to make hills uphill in only one direction.