(This is NOT what our family dinners look like)
I've blogged about our family dinners before, but I felt the need to revisit the nightmare topic again, because I felt the need to share the joy. You're welcome.
We had a wonderful meal - grilled, ginger glazed mahi mahi, yellow rice, and green beans. The table was cleared of all homework and miscellaneous pencils and highlighters, and set beautifully by The Girl. Mr. Wonderful poured us both a nice glass of Cote du Rhone...thank goodness!!
I won't go into the constant entreaties from me begging the kids to please use their cutlery and not their fingers. I won't tell you about how I have to constantly remind The Boy to use his napkin and not his shirt to wipe his mouth.
Our dinners usually start calmly enough...we say a blessing, and Mr. W and I ask the kids about their day. That's usually when we lose control. They try to outdo and out talk each other. We try to interject. They talk louder...and then, somehow, we always lose control.
Tonight, The Boy was telling us about the new club he has joined at school - which he insists on calling a sport, which leads to hearty guffaws of incredulity from us - (ultimate frisbee...see what I mean!) He segued off into a girl telling him some, ahem, personal details regarding a particular time of the month. I'm not really sure why the girl was telling him this, or why he decided to share it with us...but that's not really the point of this story, anyway.
This was when we lost control.
The Girl, for some reason, said (quite loudly), "C should wear a bra to school tomorrow!"
Then she brayed like a donkey laughed quite loudly.
We looked at her with confusion on our faces.
C made a rude comment to her.
She laughed again, then began choking on her water.
"Hey - I just spat water all over myself, and no one even cares!"
C made another rude comment. Mr. Wonderful and I made shushing noises, but we were well aware that we had lost control at that point, and it was halfhearted. We reached for our wineglasses.
C then said in a faux British accent, "Oh dear, I do believe I broke wind."
I looked at him in horror and said, "You are joking, right?"
He replied (still in the faux upper-crust British accent), "Oh no, my dear...and there's more where that came from."
And then he cackled like a hyena.
Mr. Wonderful kept asking me what he had said....then when I told him...HE LAUGHED! Oh yes, he did.
I realized I was fighting this battle all alone, and I reached for my wineglass again (for courage)...
C then tossed his balled up napkin at P and began making beatboxing noises (or so he claimed...it just sounded like weird noises to me.) P quickly joined him in making the strange sounds.
I said, "SHHHH."
They ignored me.
I asked Mr. Wonderful to please pass the bottle of wine.
KIDS 1 PARENTS 0
Help.
