Mealtime Fun

One of the most irritating things we did as kids happened at mealtimes. When one of us would get bored with the food Mom prepared, he or she would start stirring everything together. We coined this culinary technique and subsequent new dish "giggle soup". Each giggle soup had a different recipe. Some days it could contain Spam (not the email variety) and some days the main ingredient would be hamburger.

The giggle soup creator would take a bite of giggle soup and of course he/she would GIGGLE. That was the whole point of making giggle soup. This would then entice the rest of us to stir our food together and make our own giggle soup. The ratio of foodstuff would be different depending on how much of everything was eaten or not eaten. But the effect was always the same—insane giggling. Eventually, we would realize that all that food mixed together tasted like crap and the giggling (and eating) would stop.

Of course Mom would get upset. Looking back, I sure don't blame her. Money was tight, not to mention the time Mom invested in cooking. So to have the three older kids waste like that had to be maddening. I'm sure the initial creation of giggle soup had to be by my brother Mark. Mike and I were the good kids.

Another "meal" thing that made Mom blow her top was the day I got caught. I was a picky eater, and even on days when giggle soup was not the soup of the day, I didn't want to eat. So I would poke along, waiting until everyone else had eaten and been excused from the table. Then when Mom wasn't in the kitchen, I'd spoon my leftovers onto all the dirty plates that belonged to the rest of the family. I got away with this for a very long time.

Then one day it happened. Right when I was getting ready to dump a spoonful onto someone else's plate, Mom walked in. It didn't take her more than a fraction of a second to figure out what I was up to. I don't remember my punishment, but I hope it didn't involve telling my dad. We kids really weren't scared of Mom, but we knew right behind Mom was Dad. Dad wasn't afraid of having CPS called on him for whipping his kids' butts. Back then, kids got their butts smacked when they were bad. It didn't take us very long to figure out to just NOT do bad things in the first place.

…Well, except for Mark. Mark was a trouble-magnet and he always says that it's not that he was a bad kid, but that the rest of us were such good kids that it made him look bad. You will see a lot of "Mark" stories in the future, as he has supplied me with a lot of inspiration.