How to irritate your mother at the dinner table

Ten things about table manners that make a mother go "GRRRRRR" very loudly:
1. Eat your last bite of food just as your mother sits down at the table and prepares to eat her first bite.
2. Ask a sibling to throw a tiny potato at you so you can try to catch it in your mouth.
3. Laugh loud and long with your mouth open and full of half-chewed roast.
4. Pick through the fruit cocktail for the peaches and pears ONLY.
5. Insist that you really only like mashed potatoes, but after the mom evil-eye stare, you put the piece of potato in your mouth and place it in your cheek, look directly at your mother and make sure she is looking at you, the take the heel of your hand and use it to squish the lump of unchewed potato through your teeth.
6. Insist that you can't eat anything on the dinner plate because you accidentally forgot to shake the ketchup bottle before using it and hence squirted the runny ketchup water all over your food rendering it "inedible."
7. Cover everything with mustard and, as a bonus, mangle the mustard bottle into a hitherto unknown geometrical shape making it impossible for the last tablespoon of mustard to be squeezed out on mother's hot dog.
8. Drink the leftover fruit juice from the fruit cocktail straight out of the fruit cocktail bowl.
9. When setting the table, place the orphan fork/spoon/knife at mother's place on purpose despite the foreknowledge that she doesn't like those utensils. Ditto the kid-size utensils.
10. Laugh hysterically when mother suggests that you are eating like a barbarian and that she despairs of you ever being civilized.

Other Jim (and one or two other children) will seriously disgrace his mother if he EVER eats at someone else's house with the manners (or severe lack thereof) he uses at home. Fortunately Jim says that there are etiquette classes at the MTC. I'm just hoping that next year OJ will practice what I have been TRYING to preach when he attends BYU-I, and that he will NOT gross out the entire female population in Rexburg.

Comments

Karie said…
But if he grosses out the entire female population of Rexburg, there is the natural consequence of NO DATES. Ergo, he might actually learn that girls like boys with table manners.

Is this what my baby boy is going to be like in 17 years? I need to be mentally prepared for such a thing....
Jenni said…
I knew at #1 that this was an OJ post!! HA HA HA!!! If you were going to also go back to our childhood and list the things that drove our mother crazy, you would have to add "Sing at the table." Can you believe that was a rule at our house. We were never told that we couldn't swear or anything (becuase we didn't) but we were forbidden to sing at the table. The horrors. You put up with quite a lot and you deserve a prize!
#5 is a Matt entry. He was the one who figured out the "easy" way to mash potatoes.

Karie, be prepared for anything. I have actually taught these boys how to eat, but they think table manners are only for dinners with heads of state (to which they know they never will be invited). There is all manner of grossness and incivility when dealing with boys. Except for my husband who was raised without "benefit" of brothers to corrupt him.

Jen, I KNOW. Can you believe it?? And no movie/tv quoting, and the boys were not allowed to speak Spanish. And I was not allowed to put corn on my teeth, but I'll give Mom that one.
Jen said…
Boys! I don't know if I'll have to deal with any of those particular problems since I've got all girls, but I can certainly come up with a list of dinner table annoyances. I have the opposite problem (with Annie) for #1. That kid would take 3 days to finish dinner if we let her.

I'd bet O.J. would surprise you if you spied on him out on a date with a girl (or even eating dinner at someone else's house with their parents) because I never remember dating a boy who would act like that when we went out to eat. I know I wouldn't have ever dated him again, that's for sure.

I'm not surprised with all the rules your mom made for you guys at dinner because just living with Mike I've had to make rules for him, too, which include quoting movie lines. Once is one thing but that man can obsess over things, and really drive someone nuts with it which is probably the main reason your mom banned those things. I have to say though I'm surprised your mom wouldn't allow international speaking at your table. You'd think she'd want to encourage the learning of new languages. But then again, I can imagine how Mike and his brothers could ruin that, too.
Shantel said…
This post is hilarious!!!! No wonder why Hayley fits in so well at our house - That stuff is going on all the time over here! We need to have her over - or Brooky over there again soon.
Karie said…
"Except for my husband who was raised without "benefit" of brothers to corrupt him."

And there's my solution. I guess we're done having kids!!