Overheards

Standing back a bit in my parents kitchen, I watch my father carve a turkey.

My Mother: Do you want more room than that? Here's a plate. (Mom takes shows him the serving platter)

My Father: No. I'm fine.

M: (Gets out cutting board and places next to platter) Turn around. I have set up a carving place. Would that be easier for you?

F: No. (Sighs heavily as the electric carving knife hits the roasting pan.)

M: (Moves platter next to roasting pan.) I have a cutting board set up behind you. Here is the platter. Why don't you just carve it up on this. It would be easier. Wouldn't it?

F: No. (Hits the inside of the roasting pan again with the knife. The noise makes my teeth tickle)

M: Silently moves platter closer to roasting pan.

F: Slaps turkey slices onto pan and then... "I can't freakin' carve this thing with all this stuff around!" He moves aside a few misc. items on the counter that seem to be of no consequence.

M: Well... if you had moved the turkey to the cutting board...

I leave the kitchen. It is at this point that I realize both these conflicting traits reside in me and it is just too scary to watch.


LATER THAT NIGHT

H and I sit on the couch in my parents living room watching PBS. I simply can't help myself, I'm a PBS freak.

A commercial for the disabled comes on the TV. It is insipidly banal. While the screen depicts a man in a wheelchair climbing aboard a dump truck, the narrator slowly (as if we have some sort of audio visual impairment or are suddenly the age of two) says, "This...(wait a beat)is a dump.... truck. Do you... see a dump.........truck?" I am already laughing as is H. When the commercial is over after depicting that the disabled can drive a dump.....truck I am almost on the floor with laughter. The commercial is incredibly rude to me. So what we all need to process the information that the disabled can work 100% effectively even in dump..... trucks slowly?!

My Father pipes up, "Hey! Remember Mr. So and So?" No. "Well, he used to drive a dump truck and he was disabled." My mother chimes in from another room. "Oh yeah he did, he did own a dump truck." This conversation goes on with the words dump...truck being used over and over again. H and I are by now sadly hysterical and talking about the Yak conversation of last Christmas. The word yak is screamed repeatedly through tears of laughter while my parents look at us sternly as if we are somehow making fun of the disabled and them in the same sentence. This just makes us laugh harder.

I'm hear all week people and I don't know how much longer I can hold out against the bowls of Andies Mints and Oreo cookies, brie, and blasted cheddar goldfish that are stocked in my parents pantry...