One Man’s Potatoes are another Man’s Pride

My plate is taken forth to Aunt Nancy and returns with a potato in tow. I thank her for my serving with bated breath and ready my knife for the opening blow. My blade plunges through the rocky surface; I then rip the mass asunder unleashing a torrent of steam from the golden core. The sounds of my family complimenting Uncle Horst for the salmon flutter by as I draw in my personal bar of butter while carefully slicing and massing the potato into small mounds and lumps. The butter is meticulously spread and a rain of salt and pepper disperses itself over the perfectly spread potato. Everything in hand and my meal prepared to my liking, I begin to dig in and let in my family’s conversations.

“What do you think you’re doing?” hisses a garbled Germanic voice. My eyes wander to meet the grizzled face of Uncle Horst. “What are you doing to your potatoes?” grouses Horst with his half tongue as his muscles twist in my direction. “Uh,” Horst smashes his fork to the table and howls “Why did you put butter on your fucking potatoes!” All sound dies and all time with it, Horst is all there is, now standing, panting over me with eyes of steam. There is a heavy calm where all wonder just what sort of gunshot just shattered our American dinner, and long before anyone brought up their guard, the bomb erupts. “I made a special salmon sauce, why did he put butter on his potatoes Nancy?!” “He just likes his potatoes that way Horst!” Aunt Nancy finally spouts as if she were explaining to him how some men are white and some men are black. “He is embarrassing me!” bellows Horst indignantly as his body snaps and rages around the table before freezing on me. I’m lost for words; the screams that rage across the steam filled dinner table while my grandpa and grandaunt look on in horror are almost surreal. I’m the cause of this? “He didn’t know Horst; butter is the way he likes to eat his potatoes, Settle down!” Like any married man should, Horst let that a dose of logic give him pause. He stares at Nancy and breaths in deep, as one final word on the matter he turns to me and spits “spoiled brat!” before returning to his plate.

Everything is drowned out as my eyes flow up to the man and stare a hole through him. My nails dig into my hands and finally now that Horst has gotten his last word, the events that transpired flood into me. A whirl of sadness, fear, and anger flooded my mind. The man is a German marine and this is his house, if I start a fight this man will he go off the rails? Horsts old yet powerful frame was still taunt and pumped. I can’t fight but I can’t break down either! I can’t let this bastard get off after calling me that, after all he has done!

From the torrent of emotion in my mind “I’m sorry that I seem to have offended you Horst, I didn’t intend to insult you. If you want to blame something, blame how I was raised.” Softly but clearly emerged. I looked up to find my eyes locked with Horst’s. He stared before getting up and walking to the back of the house. The potatoes and salmon have now cooled; the food is nice and warm. “You handled him like a champion Wes” remarked Aunt Nancy. “I’m going to go read for a bit” and after I got my leave, I found myself lying on my bed, trying to finish Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

You Talk Too Much

A roaring “aw shit!!!” penetrated both my ear protection and DragonForce as I scrolled through the posts of Facebook, rolling my mouse over the unread script of No Exit on my desk. I then pulled off my ear protection and earplugs and curiously asked “how are things going fellas?” as I turned to face the roars and explosions. Without looking away from the electronic glow in front of him, Tim replied “fine” as he skillfully maneuvered his feathered avatar to evade the incoming projectiles and then he lunged into his attacker and smashed him into the air as he flew through the sky and off of the TV screen. “Shit!!!” roared Ted as he stared at his empty number of lives and sunk into the couch letting his controller fall into his lap before returning to watch Ben quickly be torn down by Tim and their brawl break come to an end.

“That was just what I needed” said Tim as he sighed and stood up to face his desk. “One more round.” said Ben. “Aww, I really want to but I have to work on some readings.” “Ah come on, ONE more round.” pronounced Ted. “No guys, I really can’t, I need to get this done” groaned Tim before he walked to his desk and begrudgingly woke up his sleeping computer. “C’mon Ben, I’ll work on my essay tomorrow.” “You want to join Weston?” asked Ben. “No I can’t, I need to work on my homework soon” as I turned to unpause “through fire and flames” and turned back to watch.

“Another final smash, we need to turn those off” said Ted. “Yeah seriously, dragoon pieces to” said Ben. “Oh, nice one!” Lights and explosions danced on the screen and reflected onto Ben and Ted’s faces. “You fucker! You got me with a suicide attack!” “Yeah that was awesome! Kamikaze strike!” I then chimed in, “you know kamikaze doesn’t actually mean suicide strike, it means divine wind. You see back when Mongol armies were active they tried to launch a navel attack on Japan but there was a huge typ…” “You know Weston, sometimes you talk too much” Ted stated matter of factly while diverting his attention back to the raging battle at hand.

“You know Ted; I don’t talk much because I’m not confident in my ability to talk. And for you to say I talk too much really doesn’t help that feeling.” Controls fell to the couch and typing hands rested as all eyes turned to me in silence. “I have homework to do” I said as I swiped my makeshift mouse pad from my desk before I walked through the open door and pushed it closed as the sound “sorry Weston” came from Ben’s mouth and smashed against the newfound barrier.

I walked as blinding white concrete walls, misty night air and the dim light of the library flowed by me until I found myself in the archives. The air heavy with the feeling of silence, focus coursed through me as I sat down, No Exit could not have caught me in a better mood.

My First Time Being Chased By Girls

It's quite amusing to me that when I looked back on my childhood in desperation to find a good topic for the deceptively arduous "your first time" essay, a group of five girls crawling towards me on all fours while smiling devilishly was the first image that came to mind.

In my kindergarten, there were no nerds, jocks, or popular groups; there were "boys" and "girls." While we boys did not segregate ourselves from the girls, I do remember that one of my "boy" friends threatened to "fire me" (my kindergarten's jargon for no longer hanging out with someone) when I invited one of my "girl" friends to my fifth birthday party. We had our pride as boys and they had their pride as girls, but there was one interaction that sticks out to me, the joint idea that the girls wanted to kiss us and had cooties and that we boys should avoid their kisses at all costs.

I remember one day in particularly sunny day around the back of the school house. There I was with three of the boys in the group, watching the girls crawl towards us out of the shed they were playing in. My friends started to turn white, break ranks, and before we knew it we were sprinting around the play area running from the girls trying to kiss us. At its heart it was all good fun. A large part of the appeal for the girls was a game which gave them an unspoken power over the boys and we guys enjoyed outrunning and eluding our enemies. I was chased by one girl who I knew was proactive in the girls group and didn’t casually associate with me much; she was just chasing me to be part of the game. So I wonder what would have happened if I just stopped running, stopped play the unspoken game, what they would do to me. Also, if it was just a game of tag at heart, why did we all go along with it if there were not so enticing steaks to go along with it for both groups?

A part of me really wanted to be caught by the girls. Sure it was fun to avoid the girls and one of the unspoken rules of the game was that you don’t want to get caught but the consequences of getting caught were a mystery and the threat of being captured and kissed up was one of the more tempting ways to go down. To me there was something very fantastical about the idea of being taken against my will by a horde of girls and letting them do what they wanted to me. It was kind of like the castle anthrax from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a trap you don’t want to get rescued from.

This is one of my more amusing and indeed embarrassing recollections from my young childhood. Looking back to it as an adult I find it hilarious how advanced I was for a five year old kindergartener. I wonder if the other boys and girls felt the same.