Polite Dinner Conversation

So. How was school today?

lol.

"And how did your meeting go today?"

"Turn the Goddamn phone off or we'll put you up for adoption."

God! Filth! Filth everywhere!

Say that again, and i'll nail your other foot to the floor!

" I hate this stupid family I hate it I hate it I hate it can I have more beans please?"

Lol. That's exactly how my family was... we'd start out polite but invariably it'd degenerate into threats and accusations and someone would storm off.

I'd usually be left sitting there alone with the nanny.

One of our most sacred family traditions was my brother making my grandmother cry at the table.

Everything changed when my grandmother was visiting. We'd immediately become the perfect family. So loving. So kind. So religious. It used to confuse me so as a little girl.

When my mother would get angry - often you had no idea what had set her off, too - she'd freeze you out. You'd become invisible. She'd talk to everyone but you. Can't count how many meals we've spent where one person was her target and became invisible for the length of the meal. We'd try to talk to that person to attempt to soften it, but the fierce passive-aggression she threw out overroad most all of our attempts.

My mother was too undisciplined to do that. She'd give you the silent treatment, but shoot eye daggers at you and slam things around if you dared open your mouth.

I haven't thought about this in years: sometimes she'd just go off somewhere in the middle of cooking. On many occasions it was just boiled potatoes for dinner. My father never seemed to notice. I used to put ketchup on them.

It's the dueling of the mothers here now folks

I'll see you and top that.

At least your mother cooked something... anything... even if it was just potatoes [btw, I love potatoes with ketchup on them; childhood thing,yummm].

I've never seen my mother cook anything at all. She just didn't. She just wouldn't.

We called her a nanny, but really, what kind of nanny does all the cooking, all the cleaning, the washing and ironing, the dog duty and the kid duty? Sounds like a stretched out job description to me. I guess she called her my 'nanny', because 'maid' sounded too pretentious - or maybe to try to fool the neighbors that she was doing the household tasks as well as hold down a demanding job.

I actually had to take cooking lessons as a young adult to try to make up for the lack of observing my mother cook. All I could cook was Mexican food, but I could do that damn well. Still can.