Let me stop right here and formally apologize to my Mom and Dad for my ever having been a kid. I can't begin to tell you the times my Mom served me a perfectly good meal, sometimes even perfectly delicious, and it didn't meet the standards of a kid who used to eat dirt.* And then I had kids of my own, and, no matter what my wife cooked, they wanted to eat something else.** So when my Dad told my wife that he didn't care for the ice cream she had just served him--and which he enthusiastically ate, judging by the speed with which he ate it--I figured he had the right not to like it. So...
"This ice cream's not very good. Where'd you buy it?"
"Sam's," my wife tells him.
"Sam's?"
"Yes, Sam's," she repeats herself. Sam's is one of those Warehouse Stores, along the lines of Costco and Price Club, where you have to buy a membership to shop there, and where you don't just buy something, you buy A LOT of something. But they do sell quality goods, and one of those quality goods is their ice cream. It's not just good, it's very good. Even the vanilla.
My Dad wasn't sure.
"Oh, huh... hmmm..." he clarified. "You said you bought it at Sam's?"
"Yes, Sam's," she said. "They sell some of the best ice cream."
My Dad still wasn't sure.
"Sam's..." he considered, and then considered again. "Hmmm... Sam's. Huh, yeah... well, I didn't like it. It didn't taste good. The PX sells the best ice cream."
Because of the time he spent in the military, he was able to shop at the PX at the Army base. In fact, after he retired from the military, he even worked at their PX for a few years after that. If anybody would know that the PX carried the best ice cream, it would be Dad.
"We'll have to buy some there next time," he continued. My wife patiently listened to him, like a good daughter-in-law. And I (Remember me? I'm the guy sitting outside with an empty coffee cup, waiting for my wife to join me.), I couldn't see her, but I could imagine her nodding her head and making eye contact. Big mistake. I've learned in life that if you make eye contact with someone it just encourages them to continue talking. Which he did. "I don't like the ice cream from Sam's. It just doesn't taste good."
Now he was stepping on MY toes. I happen to like Sam's. They have enough of my money to prove it.
"Yes, Dad," my wife said, politely. She likes Sam's, too. "Next time we go to the PX we'll get some ice cream."
I thought she handled that rather smoothly, since we never shopped at the PX. My Dad may have been retired from the military, but I wasn't. I had to pay for MY exclusive shopping memberships.
"Sam's..." I could hear my Dad say. I could visualize him shaking his head as he said it. "Sam's... hmmm."
I had to laugh. I was shaking my head, too.
Raising My Father
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jimduchene.blogspot.com American Chimpanzee
@JimDuchene
*Don't judge me for eating dirt. As a kid, I had a friend who used to eat his own boogers. The gaggle of kids I used to hang around with were repulsed, but also fascinated.
"What do they taste like?" we'd ask him.
"Salty," he'd say.
We'd offer him our own boogers--freshly picked--for a snack, but he thought that was gross. I always found that funny. Eating his own boogers was fine, but eating the boogers of others was not. I would have thought he would have enjoyed the variety. And, hmmm, now that I think about it...
I wonder if HE was picky about what his mother cooked.
**I don't know about your kids, but my kids only wanted to eat food we had to pay for. If it was free, they wouldn't want it.
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