More Civilized Conversation

Oh, the things I learn at dinner. Tonight the conversation took a turn towards the wild side right about the time I spotted a spider crawling on the salad bowl. No one did anything about the spider, who is still roaming around my house somewhere. I live with boys. They don't care. But someone did ask about the protein content of spiders, just in case the little bugger made it in to the salad bowl and became part of our dinner. David then began to discuss the palatability of live spiders, and how it might wriggle going down, when Graham said, "Worms not only wriggle going down, they try to crawl back out."

All heads turned, because suddenly the conversation went from speculative to authoritative. "And when have you eaten worms?" I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.

"Actually it was night crawlers. I ate ten of them at camp...with whipped cream."

Did I mention we were eating spaghetti for dinner? Spaghetti that suddenly felt like it was trying to crawl back out.

"The secret to eating worms," Graham continued, slurping a fat noodle, "is not biting down, because then you just have a lot of little worms."

Something was definitely crawling back up my throat.

"The secret is just swallowing whole. They go down much easier that way. By the way, I need hair gel and cologne."

My head was spinning a this point. I didn't even know that Graham knew what cologne was. A headline flashed across my mind: "Two Days of Junior High Transform Worm-Eating-Boy into Well-Groomed Young Man."

As I choked on my pasta, the spider long forgotten, David was much quicker on the uptake. Sometimes I don't think I could make it through dinner without him. "Who are you trying to impress?" he calmly asked his oldest son.

"What makes you think that? Maybe I just want hair gel and cologne because they're flammable!"

That's my boy!

Tweet