Everyone was so excited to go to Heidi and Mindy's house when one of them had a birthday party. Their parties were always bigger and better than the rest of the neighborhood celebrations. For example, they wouldn't have just a clown as entertainment. They'd have a clown who was also a magician. They wouldn't serve just one birthday cake. They'd serve two. They wouldn't serve just any old hamburger. They would order every kid at the party their own meal from McDonald's.
Unfortunately, these meals were pre-ordered, so they all came with the ketchup and mustard already on. Since I hated ketchup and mustard, I cried. But, I tried to keep it to myself, and still consider that a great leap forward in my level of maturity.
Now, when I am in a restaurant, and the food arrives looking very different from what I expected, I just cry inside. Again, I consider this a giant step forward in my maturity.
Really, who wants to pay for and eat a plate of food that is everything you don't want? Sometimes you forget to ask for the sauce on the side, sometimes the portion size is unexpected ( 3 ravioli for $19 at a respected Chicago restaurant ) , and sometimes it just isn't what you expected. Why are there capers? The menu didn't say anything about capers. What's with the sauce? Why is it so green? Oh, the skin is still on the chicken breast.
When I was a kid, my favorite food was Beef Wellington. I know, it was just one more fact that reminded me about how different I was from the rest of the kids. Anyway, Beef Wellington is a nice roast wrapped in liver pate and then wrapped in a flaky butter dough. Real heart-healthy food. One day, my uncle said something about the liver. The what? I looked down and it all clicked. That was my last Beef Wellington.
Still, you can see how a kid might not figure it out. I mean the layer of pate isn't that big, plus who in God's name would ever think to wrap a rich piece of red meat with liver pate?
My sister is another matter. Smartypants was all A grades and smiles. She could recite the birthplaces of every American President and then give my mom the answer to her crossword asking for some obscure Chinese leader. I remember the night my dad tried to test my sister, by asking a question about what date some historical event occurred. I blurted out 1066 without even thinking about it. What followed was a moment of ear-shattering silence as my parents and sister turned to me, the 'Laverne and Shirley' fan, with open mouthed startled looks.
'How did you know that?' 'Where did you ever learn that?'
I played it all nonchalant, but couldn't really remember where I picked up the fact. I bring all this up to show that we each get our anomaly. I knew the answer to a single question, and my sister the lawyer thought marshmallows grew on trees. OK, this was years before she became a lawyer, but still. To this day, I continue to remind her of the marshmallow tree faux pas, and have recently begun to tell her four-year-old son about this decades-old lapse. He and I communicate very well.
There is one thing I don't have the heart to tell him about, however, and it's a whopper. See, he loves eating. At home or in restaurants, and he doesn't have that thing of unexpected surprise clouding his enjoyment of the meal. But, that can only last so long, since his favorite food is red meat. Burgers, steaks, lamb chops, and really anything else that can get doused with ketchup. He knows other animals eat meat, and some of his beloved dinosaurs were meat eaters. The trouble is, he hasn't yet figured out where all this meat comes from.
That will be a darker day, by far, than the liver pate discovery, or even his mom's marshmallow tree shame. I will, however, do my best to outshine his discovery with fresh marshmallow tree reminders to his mother.
