| Mar. 23rd, 2008 @ 09:57 pm Hard-learned childhood lessons |
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I hate ham. Not ham sandwiches, or ham omelets, or ham in split pea soup, but ham dinners. The kind where you get a big slab of ham on a plate. I'm not a fan of any of the side dishes, either. Not scalloped potatoes or ... pretty much anything else that gets served with ham.
My dad loved ham.
Every Easter, he insisted on ham. And every Easter, my mom would buy a damn ham and cook it with the vile side dishes, and I'd resign myself to my least favorite dinner in the world.
Until one year when, shortly before Easter, my father confessed something to me. He didn't like ham dinners either. What he liked was leftover ham. He liked the sandwiches and the fried ham and eggs at breakfast and the ham fried rice and all the good things you could make with Easter dinner leftovers.
I was thrilled. When I was helping my mom with the shopping that year, she started picking through the pile of hams in the meat case, looking for a Hormel Cure 81 ham (the ham of choice in the family.)
"You know," I said, "Dad told me he doesn't like ham. He just likes all the leftovers. He hates ham dinner. So can we get a turkey?"
She turned to me and said, "I have not been married to your father all these years without noticing what he likes for dinner, and he likes ham."
Into the cart went Easter dinner.
The moral of the story? Honesty might be the best policy, but sometimes, it's incredibly ineffective. |
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