 Christopher Low
|
When I was younger my brother and I were constantly fighting. One
day, my mother decided to ban swearing. We were at a loss. We stared
at each other across the dining room table with enough venom to take
out a tiger, but we had no words. I have no idea how it started, but
we began to call each other the names of the foods around the kitchen.
"You're such a Quaker, Oatmeal." "You're a can of tuna fish that
isn't even dolphin safe." "You're a carton of milk." "You're a half
empty bottle of soy sauce. We threw these terms at each other every
morning over breakfast and every night over dinner, somehow making the
terms more and more apropos to our specific fight.
"You're Tropicana
orange juice, some pulp." "You're sour cream." "You're such an
apple." "You're a nectarine." "Yea, well, you're a banana." It went
on for days.
"You're unpopped popcorn," he would say to me. "You're
a frozen chicken," I would shoot right back. "You're cheerios."
"You're leftover lasagna." "You're salt." "You're pepper." Towards
the end we had to stretch pretty far; we were running out of foods in
the kitchen.
It was dinnertime and it was our final battle; we both knew it. He
called me a Poptart. I was 15 and I had really bad skin. The red
specks of the coating on the Poptart flashed across my face as tears
welled up in my eyes. I stood up from the table and with my last
ounce of rage I yelled at him, "Well you're a Poptart without
frosting, and nobody likes a Poptart without frosting!" I stormed out
of the room.
The next day swearing privileges were restored.
 |
