Pictured: the Pace company demonstrates their safety measures against salmonella poisoning.
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I was listening to the news coverage of the big tomato scare, kind of laughing it off, and then I realized, oh I think I had that salmonella thingy. It was a couple of weeks ago and I blamed it on improperly cooked seafood, but I had all the signs they say to watch for, the runs, the fever, the whole thing, so now I figure it was the 'maters. On the news they also say to go to a doctor but that sort of thing never occurs to me.
The sickness hit me at the worst imaginable time. Not only were my mother and sister in town for a too-brief visit with the kids, but I was also looking at two days of sitting in a jury pool. By the second day it became obvious that it was going to be sitting in a jury pool and signing out a lot to run to the bathroom.
Jury service wreaks havoc on my business. No one cuts me a break for the time off, it usually just means that I'll have to turn down work that I can't afford to turn down. I feel duty-bound to go, but if I ever actually got tapped for a case I don't know what I'd do. I don't have the balls to be one of those guys who pulls a psycho neo-nazi routine at the interview. I already had one day down, and they settled all their cases that day without paneling any jurors, thus reducing my chances of getting picked by half. I could tap out due to illness, but they'd just reschedule me for a couple months down the line, and the lottery would start all over. My second day was Friday before Memorial Day. The odds were too good to pass up.
By noon when they let us out I was already a wreck, but I now had unexpected time on my hands to spend with my Mom and Sis. Their hotel was nearby, and it was still morning West Coast time, so I went to collect them.
Now I don't want to make the women in my family out to be a couple of horrible meddlers, because they're not. All I'm saying is that they had stayed out good and late in Soho, that bottles of wine were opened and consumed, and that the topic that was fresh on their minds was the parenting skills I had been displaying, or lack thereof. By the time I turned up the next morning, the rhetorical saws were sharpened, oiled and ready to go.
Look, I'm philosophical about this. It's inevitable that you're going to screw your kid up in a million ways, just like it's inevitable that you're the last one to notice everything you're doing wrong. I know that it comes with the territory that everyone has an opinion. God knows I do it to other parents. When all is said and done I appreciate them giving me an objective outlook, and that they respect me enough to make the suggestions directly to me rather than just nattering behind my back about it. I just wasn't prepared for how defensive and hostile it made me. When someone tells you you're handling your kid wrong, even in a small way, it hurts your feelings, and it's up to you to manage those feelings. Add in a mean case of food poisoning, and I'm afraid I just didn't handle my side of the conversation very well at all.
After about an hour of failing to contain my worst impulses, I was released to lead us to a restaurant. But I still couldn't let it go and the argument continued down the street. I think at this point my mother was starting to lose her patience with me quite frankly. She had very respectfully offered a point of view that I might find useful on a topic of great interest to us both, and I could have just said, "that's interesting, I'll have to think about that". (And it should be noted, her ideas have since been examined and found helpful in the rational light of day.) But you would have thought I was on trial for my life the way I was arguing the case, and I may have made use of personal invective where it suited me. I think eventually she was ready to hit me back on something.
When I happened to mentioned my illness, my mother started to wonder whether I really had food poisoning. Impyling, I guess, that I was merely the victim of a weak constitution and a flair for the dramatic. Now I'm really angry. It's bad enough I have to defend my parenting, now I have to defend whatever it is that's going on in my bowels. And I did. Vigorously.
"Look, you both said you had a touch of something the morning after the Italian restaurant. You both had a bit of my meal. I ate the whole thing and I got the full-on diarrhea and the fever. Ergo ipso facto, my dinner gave me food poisoning."
"All I'm saying is that maybe you touched something in the restroom that someone touched who didn't wash his hands."
Why is this important to her? My head is going to explode. Oh no. Don't say it. Do not say what you're thinking, you idiot. Respect your mother and let the matter drop right here and now.
I hold it in a good two seconds, and then:
"So you're saying maybe it was that guy's cock I sucked in the restroom when I was away from the table?"
We found something else to talk about.
The sickness hit me at the worst imaginable time. Not only were my mother and sister in town for a too-brief visit with the kids, but I was also looking at two days of sitting in a jury pool. By the second day it became obvious that it was going to be sitting in a jury pool and signing out a lot to run to the bathroom.
Jury service wreaks havoc on my business. No one cuts me a break for the time off, it usually just means that I'll have to turn down work that I can't afford to turn down. I feel duty-bound to go, but if I ever actually got tapped for a case I don't know what I'd do. I don't have the balls to be one of those guys who pulls a psycho neo-nazi routine at the interview. I already had one day down, and they settled all their cases that day without paneling any jurors, thus reducing my chances of getting picked by half. I could tap out due to illness, but they'd just reschedule me for a couple months down the line, and the lottery would start all over. My second day was Friday before Memorial Day. The odds were too good to pass up.
By noon when they let us out I was already a wreck, but I now had unexpected time on my hands to spend with my Mom and Sis. Their hotel was nearby, and it was still morning West Coast time, so I went to collect them.
Now I don't want to make the women in my family out to be a couple of horrible meddlers, because they're not. All I'm saying is that they had stayed out good and late in Soho, that bottles of wine were opened and consumed, and that the topic that was fresh on their minds was the parenting skills I had been displaying, or lack thereof. By the time I turned up the next morning, the rhetorical saws were sharpened, oiled and ready to go.
Look, I'm philosophical about this. It's inevitable that you're going to screw your kid up in a million ways, just like it's inevitable that you're the last one to notice everything you're doing wrong. I know that it comes with the territory that everyone has an opinion. God knows I do it to other parents. When all is said and done I appreciate them giving me an objective outlook, and that they respect me enough to make the suggestions directly to me rather than just nattering behind my back about it. I just wasn't prepared for how defensive and hostile it made me. When someone tells you you're handling your kid wrong, even in a small way, it hurts your feelings, and it's up to you to manage those feelings. Add in a mean case of food poisoning, and I'm afraid I just didn't handle my side of the conversation very well at all.
After about an hour of failing to contain my worst impulses, I was released to lead us to a restaurant. But I still couldn't let it go and the argument continued down the street. I think at this point my mother was starting to lose her patience with me quite frankly. She had very respectfully offered a point of view that I might find useful on a topic of great interest to us both, and I could have just said, "that's interesting, I'll have to think about that". (And it should be noted, her ideas have since been examined and found helpful in the rational light of day.) But you would have thought I was on trial for my life the way I was arguing the case, and I may have made use of personal invective where it suited me. I think eventually she was ready to hit me back on something.
When I happened to mentioned my illness, my mother started to wonder whether I really had food poisoning. Impyling, I guess, that I was merely the victim of a weak constitution and a flair for the dramatic. Now I'm really angry. It's bad enough I have to defend my parenting, now I have to defend whatever it is that's going on in my bowels. And I did. Vigorously.
"Look, you both said you had a touch of something the morning after the Italian restaurant. You both had a bit of my meal. I ate the whole thing and I got the full-on diarrhea and the fever. Ergo ipso facto, my dinner gave me food poisoning."
"All I'm saying is that maybe you touched something in the restroom that someone touched who didn't wash his hands."
Why is this important to her? My head is going to explode. Oh no. Don't say it. Do not say what you're thinking, you idiot. Respect your mother and let the matter drop right here and now.
I hold it in a good two seconds, and then:
"So you're saying maybe it was that guy's cock I sucked in the restroom when I was away from the table?"
We found something else to talk about.
