FINE DINING
TABLE MANNERS ARE OVERRATED
There is nothing like barbecued hamburgers, unless you’re a vegetarian or a cow. I went through that no-meat phase a decade or two ago, until my iron levels dipped lower than Greece’s current credit rating.
My kids have not yet been through the vegetarian stage; they’re too busy trying to order their own separate entrees each night, taking full advantage of their personal chef. Thankfully though, burgers are a safe food in our house. Everyone likes them, eats them, and sometimes they even chew them.
Vivian, a.k.a. Princess Squirm-a-lot, tends to circle her burger, much like a vulture approaching carrion. She squats on her chair as if it’s a balance beam and hovers over her plate. Why sit still when you can squat, pivot and practice 360s?
William, a.k.a. Captain Carbohydrate, generally manages to sit upright, but has an obsession with eating his food in layers.
On Burger Night last week, he started gnawing at the top bun, proceeded to chew on the bottom bun, and then licked the ketchup off the piece of dead cow that lay in the palm of his hand.
I felt the need to parent, a distinct urge I had felt once before, moments after I’d discovered Vivian and William had used rocks to carve their names into the side of our minivan.
“Before you attack your burger,” I said, “please get a knife.”
William wiped his hands on his pants, cleaned his mouth with his sleeve, and walked to the kitchen to grab a weapon.
He returned and started gently sawing back and forth with a bread knife, getting nowhere on Operation Butcher-dead-cow.
“You need to push down harder when you saw,” I said, getting into the swing of this parenting thing.
Vivian — William’s minimom — stood on her chair and offered clarification.
“Do it like you’re chopping the head off a human you don’t like,” she said.
I continued to digest that image while I swallowed my dead cow. Visions of Queen Elizabeth I ordering the beheading of her halfsister played in my mind.
Then I glanced at my husband. With a simple raise of his eyebrows, he managed to give me that look, the one that claimed his genetic material had nothing to do with the exchange we’d just witnessed, that implied it was me who Vivian took after.
And he is right. She is the Wednesday to my Morticia.
Seconds later, William sawed through his naked burger and speared one half with his fork.
He picked it up and started waving it around like a torch.
Vivian dismounted, I looked at my husband, and he pointed to his mouth.
“You’ve got lettuce in your teeth,” he said.
I considered borrowing William’s knife to attack the stubborn greenery hanging from my mouth, but thought better of it. I do have some standards.
Welcome to the Addams Family.