I Eat Like a Pig
Really. This is a dirty little secret. Of course I have good table manners out in public, and certainly seek, in vain at times, to instill them in the orangutans I share my table with nightly. But alone, I, as my grandmother used to say, find myself “gobbling like a field hand.” I stuff the food in my mouth, spill it on my clothes, wipe my fingers on my pants, dribble drinks down my chin…And I don’t know why. My Great Fear is that when I become Old, which is feeling a little bit like next week, that I will forget the social graces I so effortlessly carry off in public and my Inner Field Hand will shamble out of the dark, grabbing food off of my grandchildren’s plates and stuffing it lewdly into my pie hole, wiping the remains across my sadly deflated Fun Bags.
My own grandmother, who could be caustic and persnickety, went more quietly mad, but she also traipsed around in transparent negligees. And one memorable time at the beach, when we had workmen in the house, I found her in the living room with her shirt pulled up and her once mammoth breasts drifting down around her pants, having escaped the confines of her bra. She looked utterly confused, just staring down at them like they were foreign refugees who had appeared at her waist begging for help. “Something is wrong, here…” She said. So then there I was, trying to quickly and quietly stuff 20 lbs of unruly wayward boobs back into their structural support system while she stood by passively watching me both pulling and pushing them back into submission. Not pretty. And in a previous post I told about my Aunt who once entertained the Church Ladies wearing nothing but a shirt. So maybe it is is Mad Nudity that will come upon me, rather than poor table etiquette.
Having watched family members get old, I fairly recently did ask Texter to take me outside and shoot me in the head once I started going crazy. He was Truly Horrified, but suggested that perhaps he might could accept poisoning me. He may feel different when I appear naked at the table and stuff his wife’s pork chops in my mouth. But reflecting on all of this, I realized I should have asked The Pokester to help me with this task. I know that he is probably in the process right now of plotting my demise, as I have taken away all of his electronic equipment. Last night he told me I was “impossible to live with” and I wanted to say, “Honey, just wait.” Actually, I wanted to say “Honey, pack your effing bag and Get The Hell Out of Here” in the moment. But I decided just to send him to his room where he could more quietly calculate his revenge. So at least now I feel more confident about who I can turn to when the Naked Field Hand arrives.


