Special Writings

I recently came back from a family dinner. You know the kind.

The kind where you go up to the house which already looks a hell of a lot nicer then your own and thoughts begin to wander in out of the chasm's of your mind, such as: "God what am I doing here?" or "Alright...30 seconds to go...now how many are left? Let's calculate." Sometimes you even find yourself challenging yourself..."Let's try and calculate the seconds until I have to go. I'll bet I can do it before they answer their door." So you start calculating, but before you barely get started the host comes to the door with this big smile on their face and dressed to greet the queen of England. you look down at yourself and either feel over dressed or under dressed (in my case horribly under dressed!!!!) Then are the kisses. God I hate those. They're not even real. They're the kisses where your not sure whether to move to left or the right cheek first and then when you get there your just kissing air. The Italians, Greeks and Portuguese I'm sure are familiar with this ritual.

When your done with the kissing you stand back and look at the house. Even if you've been in this house before, either your looking around for something new to look at or trying to look for something that you recognize. Then you realize how damn clean the house is. As though it's popped out of an IKEA or SEARS catalogue. I personally remember the state of the house my family and I left the house in and bite my lip.

The living room is pointed out and you find a seat. It's hard finding a seat that's not to far from the conversation area (so that your not being rude) and that's not to close so you don't have to take part in the conversation. So your looking around at some of the accssesories and you think "Damn, where have these people gone. You don't get vases like that here." or "Wow, I wonder what they were thinking when that picture was taken?" As the coversationalsits start to get bored of their topic (or in some cases, each other) they turn to you and start asking questions about how your life has been going. School is always the first question. "Good." you say. But honestly what else are you going to say? "School is accually pretty crappy!" ? no.

Anyway, when dinner finally rolls around you are already talked out and the though of people's mouths being filled tight is very yinviting. So you go to the table and sit down waiting for the host to serve you. Then they start pointing out the dishes and what they are, their origin, and why they decided to cook it. when it's finally on your plate yourlooking at the creation the hostess' mother got when she was visiting the coast line of some amazon country and you wonder "is this thing still alive?" You eat it, and of course no matter how bad it is. you smile and gush about how you've never had anything like it. It's so tasty. BLEH! "Try cooking shit next time," you think. Or maybe you did like it, but your too busy engrossed in conversation t enjoy it. Or too busy questioned. Or to busy lost in your own thoughts. Whatever it may be, for once the kids are usually the sanctuary. Go in the basement, or general children's area, watch a movie or play with toys in your own corner.

Yes, these family dinners have a way of getting to all of us at some point or another. I think we can all agree that after a certin amount of time we get back in teh car and say or think "thank God that it's over." It's funnier when you have someone to vent to. Like I did. My mom's friend and I laughed as told him of all the craziness that happened. He laughed at the spilled sauce on my shirt and giggled at the large piece of pie that had been wrapped heavily in tin foil. Bitter sweetness


***I would love to explain the previous post, however I'm sure that you can piece together the title, along with the comment(s) and the accual post what accually happened.