| General Non-Fiction posted December 11, 2023 |
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A typical family dinner
Let's Talk About Cheese
by Jim Wile
The four of us sat down to dinner one night when the kids were young. My daughter, Lindsay, was ten at the time, and my son, Greg, was 7. I was the cook, and after the usual complaints about the food in front of them, we all lapsed into silence. After a couple minutes during which my wife, Elise, and I ate and the kids pushed their food around their plates, Elise asked the group, “Doesn’t anyone have anything to talk about?”
“Do we have to talk?” asked Linds (never Lindsay to us—always just Linds).
“This is one of the few times during the day we are all together as a family, so we should talk to each other.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” said Linds.
“Of course there is,” I said. “There are a million topics we could talk about. Let’s talk about cheese.”
“Cheese?” said Greg.
“Sure. I’ll start. What’s your favorite cheese, Mom?”
“Swiss.”
“How about you, Linds?”
“Cheddar.”
“See, now isn’t this a rousing conversation? How about you, Greg?
“I don’t like cheese. It smells like Linds’ feet.”
“My feet don’t smell! Not like your breath does, Egg-breath,” this being one of her nicknames for him along with Geg-head, Toast-boy, and a few others.
“Do you know that if your feet smell and your nose runs, then you are built upside down?” I added to lighten the mood.
“Alright, Dad, tell us what your favorite cheese is,” said Mom.
“I’d have to say Casu Martzu. It’s made from sheep’s milk and maggots.”
“Eeeew!” said Linds.
“What are maggots?” asked Greg.
“They’re fly larvae. They’re often found on dead bodies.”
“Dad’s just joking, kids. He’s never eaten cheese with fly larvae.”
“I saw Shadow eat a fly the other day,” said Greg. Shadow was our cat.
“You see? Shadow knows what’s good,” I said.
“Do you know what Greg did the other day?” said Linds. “He put Shadow in the refrigerator, and when I opened it to get a snack, Shadow was sitting right there looking at me. Startled the heck out of me.”
Shadow was the most tolerant cat there ever was. You could do anything to her, and she would let you. I could just picture her waiting there patiently inside the refrigerator for a kid to eventually let her out.
“Please don’t put the cat in the refrigerator, Greg. She’s too heavy for the rack in there.” I told him.
Greg started wiggling his tooth then. “Is that tooth getting loose?” asked Mom.
“Yeah, it’s my double tooth.”
I said, “Why don’t you run out to the garage and get me that tent stake puller. I’ll pull it out for you.”
“No way!”
When Linds had her first loose tooth at age six, I brought that long-handled, rusty old thing in and said I would pull the tooth for her with it, and she completely freaked when she saw it. I told her I was just kidding, but I think I made teeth-pulling a lifelong trauma for her. After that, she would begin wailing before I would even touch her loose tooth. It had become a standard family joke for me to ask the kids to go get that thing whenever they had a loose tooth.
“Do you think the tooth fairy will give me two quarters instead of one when this tooth comes out?” asked Greg.
“Probably. I’m sure she’s seen geminated teeth before,” said Mom.
“Why is it called ‘geminated’?”
“It’s from the word ‘Gemini’ who were the twins named Castor and Pollux in Greek mythology. That’s also the name of a constellation,” she told him.
“Constellation?” asked Greg. “I thought that meant when you couldn’t go number two.”
We all cracked up at that. Linds said, “That’s constipation, Egg-breath. A constellation is a bunch of stars that look like something, like the grouping of stars known as The Big Dipper.”
“Oh. What’s that look like?”
She looked at him strangely.
Oblivious as to why, he continued. “There’s a rollercoaster at Cedar Point called ‘The Gemini’. It’s pretty good, but not as good as ‘The Magnum’.”
“And why do you think they call it ‘The Gemini’?” I asked him about this two-trained, side-by-side rollercoaster.
“Maybe they only allow people with double teeth to ride on it?” he ventured. Now I looked at him strangely.
“What’s your favorite coaster at Cedar Point, Mom?” I asked Elise, knowing what her answer would be.
“Well, I’ve only been on one—the Blue Streak—and I found that to be quite exciting enough for my tastes. Never again!”
“Oh, that’s so lame!” exclaimed Greg. “The lift hill is only 40 feet high. The Magnum’s is 205 feet.”
“Well, you know how easily my stomach gets upset.”
In addition to being a supertaster and supersmeller, she also has a super-sensitive stomach—another of those dubious super powers of hers. Not one for rollercoasters, ocean cruises, helicopter rides, or rocket launches, her stomach is so sensitive that rides in an elevator can even be a challenge for her.
By this time, after Elise and I had finished eating and the kids had finished a forkful or two of whatever delicious concoction I had made that night and had done their best to hide the rest, the meal was over.
I said, “Now do you see what a fascinating subject cheese can be?”
 Recognized |
#16 December 2023 |
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