The Dinner

Greatest hits week goes on... One of my favorite memories, this. Please to enjoy.
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I was subjected to a lot of things as a child. Weren’t we all? Many of the little stories I remember today did not seem at the time to be earth shaking or life changing at the time. When I look back on these stories, I realize they have become the cornerstones of who I am. They certainly have helped forge my humor, which in turn has been my most trusted mechanism used to get me through this grandiose life.Having recently spoken on the phone with my dear sister, I realized these memories have a tendency to surface now and then. Sometimes there is joy, and laughter. Sometimes, there is obvious pain. Sometimes, a memory flooding back will stop the whole world dead in its tracks. Our particular shared memory was of a family dinner. Not, mind you a special family dinner, (though some days enough nostalgia seeps out of my blackened heart to realize that all family dinners are special), just a normal everyday casserole kind of dinner. So far removed from this normal everyday casserole kind of dinner, I was amazed by our shared recollections, particularly the details. My sister’s memory was every bit as vivid, and every bit as funny as my own.

Mom was making a normal everyday casserole for our normal everyday casserole kind of dinner, which ordinarily would not have raised any eyebrows, or excited any taste buds. This time, something was horribly wrong. Our normal everyday casserole smelled a bit like ordinary everyday sweat socks, after a particularly hard game of basketball. This is to say, it smelled a bit rank.

“Kids, time to eat,” came the call and d day was launched. It looked ok, like normal everyday casserole, but the smell was overpowering. My sister is famous for eschewing all but the freshest food. She won’t even eat canned food, because it could have ‘turned’ before it got processed. She’ll smoke cigarettes, and drink beer until she floats, but heavens forbid you ask her to eat day old leftovers. Obviously, given this disposition, my sister was the first to bring all our suspicions to light.

“Mom, this cheese is bad. I can’t eat this. It’s disgusting,” or something along those lines. This had an immediate and negative effect on the tenor of our normal everyday casserole dinner, with my father launching into the standard fatherian litany about hard work, sacrifice and rotten kids.

My sister and I were greatly discouraged. I tried, always being Mom’s little trooper, to eat the damn thing and smile while silently gagging. It was awful. This cheese had turned so long ago, it no longer resembled dairy. It had a chemical composition closer to an alloy of radioactive Lead and Californium. Tears welled in my sister's eyes as she complied with my father’s orders. She bit, she swallowed. She cried.

Dad looked on in triumph. Having won the battle, he took a large bite of his own plate of fetid rotten normal everyday casserole. His look was priceless. I do believe his eyes actually gave up their grip, and succumbed to gravity, and shattered on the very plate that held the poison he had ordered us to eat.

While the people who know my dad know can guess what happens in the end of this story, it will be surprising to others. In short, he ate all that casserole. He ate it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he went back for seconds, just to prove he was right, and we were wrong.

So how is this a defining moment of our lives? My sister and I for one remember the exact same events, right down to the look on my Mom and Dad’s faces when they ate the food. We remember resenting being considered bad kids when we clearly were not being bad kids. We remember that we wished it would have ended like a movie, with dad saying to mom, “You did your best, let’s go to Mickey D’s.” In my life now, I try very hard to provide that movie ending. You never know what will become a defining memory in someone’s life, you had better try and make it good.