Mom's Birthday Dinner

My family doesn't usually make a big deal about birthdays. For whatever reason, my Dad wanted to take my Mom out for her birthday this year, and he asked C and I to come along.

They love this restaurant called Fox Fire. It's quite literally the place old people go to have a drink before they die. In fact, when I was in college, this place was known for its accessible old women waiting at the bar for younger men. It was and is yacky in this way, but good for stories. My parents are aware of this, but they love eating there anyway.

There were a few memorable moments from our dinner, which was very very good. The food just rocks - which was a huge surprise for me.

My mom decided to announce fairly loud in response to a question posed by C: "Yeah, and right next to us were two queers having an argument!" Then she proceeded to do the floppy wrist action for us. WHO TALKS LIKE THAT? My mom isn't exactly the most open minded person on the planet, she was raised Amish after all. BUT, she has never openly displayed anything other than fair minded opinions regarding same sex relationships. Her loud use of the term queer made me most uncomfortable.

C offered me some blueberrys from his dessert. I took my fork and tried to fish for them myself instead of taking the ones from his spoon. He said "Tell your parents you love them so that I can take you back to the zoo."

My Dad is in cooking school. He retired a few years ago and this is how he keeps himself busy. He decided to tell us about one class, catering, where he had to come up with a theme. He explained it as such: "It was a New Orleans theme, as if the Daughters of the Revlolution were putting on a benefit...they were trying to close the gender gap. They had noticed that when it is cold outside, older homeless women could always go out on the streets to get enough money to get shelter. There was nothing the men could do, so the Daughters were raising money for Viagra to give to the elderly men. It provided a rise to their situation."

And then when I was waxing nostalgic about my childhood, I said "I probably knew how to order a Rusty Nail before I knew how to order a Coke" when explaining that one of my most vivid memories as a child was the fact that Dad ALWAYS had a Rusty Nail with dinner.

They both made protests about how bad that sounded.

35 years old and I still haven't learned how to join the adult, inappropriate topic conversation.

That's quite alright by me.