Dinner Table Antics

I love beans. I like to make a big pot of pinto beans with bacon or ham in it. I love to eat my beans with jalapenos and cornbread. Yummy!

As I was eating a bowl of homemade beans yesterday I remembered how my Dad used to like to crack little jokes at the dinner table. Now you must understand that my Dad was a very humorous person, but he was also about as straight as they came in regards to off-color jokes. He never told dirty jokes. But he wasn't averse to using innuendo in order to make you think of something slightly indelicate. For instance, if we were eating beans he would tell my Mom, "Make sure you only give me 239 beans." Someone would inevitably ask him, "Why only 239?" He would reply, "Because one more and it would be two forty," which he would drawl just enough to make it sound like "too farty."

When admonishing kids to finishing everything on their dinner plates, Dad would often tell them with a smile, "I want you to eat every corn and pea on your plate." Which everyone heard as, "I want you to eat every corn and pee on your plate."

This kind of silly innuedo was at least a little better than my Uncle Don who would refrain from using words at the table but enjoyed calling for foods by sound effect. For instance, he would ask for milk or cream by mooing. A porcine grunt or squeal meant "pass the bacon."

Dad also perfected the art of table stacking, an art that his sons have carried on with great flair. My Dad could start with a ketchup bottle, stack plates, pans, and condiment containers until there stood towering a veritable monument of frighteningly balanced architecture. It was like a car wreck, you were scared that the whole mess was going to topple in a huge crash at any moment, but you couldn't look away.