My Wife's A Great Cook...

My wife's a great cook.
     She makes everything from scratch, and she'll spend hours cooking in the kitchen. In fact, she's such a good cook, she can even make English food taste good, and any food you have to put vinegar on to improve the flavor of, well, let's just say you'd have to admit that it would be a challenge.
     One time my Mom, when my wife wasn't around, asked me who the better cook was.
     I had to be honest, but diplomatic.
     "Mom," I told her, "when it comes to cooking Mexican food, you're the best, but my wife's the better cook when it comes to different kinds of food."
     Since Mexican food is all my mother ever cooked, she was happy with my answer.
     One time, my wife made some great fried rice. It had corn, it had peas, it had carrots, but what it mainly had were large chunks of perfectly seasoned chicken. Moist and tender. Just like my wife.
     I served myself. My father, on the other hand, likes to be served, or he won't eat. He's old-school that way. Myself, I don't believe in being hungry.
     So my wife serves my Dad. Napkin, utensils, drink, dessert...  it's all on the table. All he has to do is sit and eat. And eat he does. Even when my Dad isn't feeling well he still has a healthy appetite. Once, when he was sick, my mother asked him how he could still eat.
     "Honey," he told her, very sincerely, "it's not my stomach's fault I'm sick."
     So, anyway, the fried rice is great. I tell my wife it's great. She smiles that modest smile of hers. She knows it's great.
     Dad, meanwhile, is still chowing down. Chomp, chomp, chomp! He cleans his plate. If he was a kid, I could imagine him lifting the plate to his face and licking it clean.
     "Did you like the fried rice, Dad?" I ask him. It was obvious he did.
     "What?"
     "The fried rice, did you like it?"
     "The fried rice?"
     "Yeah."
     "Did I like it?"
     "Yeah."
     "It was good," he says, "but the chicken was kind of tough."
     My wife looks at me, gets up from the table, and walks away.
     "Where's she going?" my Dad, the diplomat, asks, and serves himself some more fried rice.*
     The thing of it is, that's my Dad's idea of a compliment. When my beloved mother was still alive, their air conditioner broke, and they needed a new one. Out of the goodness of my heart, and with a little nudging from my wife, I decided to buy them a new one. The store we bought it from gave us a day and a time it would be delivered and installed, and we made it a point to be there just in case, you know, anything went wrong. 
     The workers got up on the roof, removed the old one, and brought it down. My Dad and I took a look at it. Yeah, we could see it was passed it's expiration date. Just like my ex-wife. 
     The workers then brought out the new one. As they took it out of the box, my Dad took a close look at it, and said: "Plastic? It's made out of plastic? Where'd you buy it, the dollar store?"
     No, actually we bought it from Sears, and, for the record, only the shell of the air conditioner was made out of plastic. Everything on the inside was still the same. It makes sense. It's a way to save money, sell it for less, and make it lighter to carry and move around.  I won't mention the actual brand I bought, but it was a name brand and the model I bought was top of the line. It was actually more air conditioner than they needed. 
     But, like I said, that's my Dad's way of giving a compliment.
 
 

Raising My Father
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*For the record, my wife has never made a tough piece of chicken in her life, and this chicken was particularly moist and tender...  just like my wife.