dinner

My father had made a nice dinner. We had a guest over. Dad served enchiladas.

The guest took a few bites, and then said, "Oh, I just got something hard."

Dad ruined the meal by asking, "Toenail clipping hard?"

Another time, my father made clam chowder. He didn't care about my seafood allergy -he just wasn't a fan. He lit two candles on the kitchen table, and we all sat down to eat.

I asked, with my mouth full, "What's in this?"

One of my brothers had to translate for us.

Dad started with, "Well, clams. And there's ..."

I spat out the soup. Actually I spewed it out. And in doing so, I extinguished both candles.

childhood

I ran over a snake with the lawnmower. The sight of it caused me to throw up. Repeatedly. Into the uncut grass. I then had to mow through my own vomit, while crying.

Popcorn

I did a quick internet search, to find out if I can survive on just popcorn.

I can! But not indefinitely.

Crap. Now I have to walk to the grocery store. Eventually.

furniture

In my current home, I have $60 worth of furniture. Most of what I have, I got for free. Nearly everything is second-hand.

Side note: My couch had another, larger, matching couch that couldn't fit through the door. We donated it to the house across the street. That house exploded and burned down. It was a meth lab.

In my childhood home, we didn't have enough chairs in the kitchen for everyone. If the entire family happened to be home for dinner, I had to go searching for something to sit on. Some random stool. I sometimes ended up sitting on a piano bench, with my brother.

We had enough seats in the dinning room. But, no. The dinning room was for *special occasions*.

my father's ski instructor.

When I was 14, I had the privilege of skiing with my father's former ski instructor. Our school had a ski team. That ski instructor also taught some of my father's other classes. He had retired as a teacher, but was still skiing. He joined me for a few runs, and we got to talk on the chairlift.

I asked him about my father. I wanted to know more about the strange man who sometimes occupied our house.

He said, "Well, your father was mostly a good student, but he had a habit of climbing out of the window mid-lesson."

my father's yearbook.

When we were kids, one of my brothers found our father's senior yearbook. His quote was, "Skiing. The only way to fly."

My brother read it out loud, and said, "Wow. That's pretty corny."

Then our mother piped up, "He didn't write that!"

My brother shouted, "Well, who wrote it? What did he actually write?"

She shouted back, "His ski instructor wrote it. He wrote something rude, and they wouldn't publish it."

serves two

My frozen meal: Contains two servings.

Me: Well, I disagree with that.