I Don't Stop At IHOP

I think everyone has a food they don’t like, can’t eat, don’t want to be near. It’s the smell, the taste, the texture, the aroma wafting through the air that dulls the appetite, turns stomachs and make us want to be somewhere else. It’s a real back-ended diet technique I’ve tried to avoid. You know what your food is. Mine is pancakes. And I blame my mother.

Feeding seven kids can put a strain on any food budget and my mother was always trying to find ways to stretch our food dollars. She found one solution on a table at the supermarket. The table held packets, hundreds of them, of pancake mix. Add some water, the directions claimed, and each packet could produce enough to feed a village. The packets cost ten cents each. The brand name, as I recall, was Generic. My mother bought five dollars worth and that started our pancake era.

We had pancakes for breakfast, pancakes for lunch, pancakes for dinner. On week days she’d give us the left-over breakfast pancakes to snack on while we waited for the school bus. At school, we’d open our lunch bags to find a peanut butter and jelly on pancake sandwiches. Yum.

It took months to work our way through the packets but we finally made it. It took years before I could look at a pancake dead on. Years more before I could actually eat one and then it was just to be polite. I still only eat them to be polite but it takes less effort. Either my palate is settling or I’m getting better at the polite thing. I think it’s the palate.

What We Don't Heat

I think every family has some short-hand phrase that passes down a few generations and makes absolutely no sense to an outsider. Often the phrase makes little sense to the younger family generation but they all know what it means. Our family phrase has to do with Kroftas. I have six siblings scattered across the country. All have children. Some have grandchildren. Each generation is familiar with the words,

“Shut the door. I’m not heating Kroftas.”

The phrase is said in an overly loud voice during winter and is directed at whatever child has just come in and left a door open. Kroftas is a good word to say in an overly loud voice. It starts at the back of the throat and has a good positioning of hard and soft consonants and vowels that it explodes forward toward the hapless child. Doors are quickly shut at the word ‘Kroftas.’

When they were younger my kids asked, “What’s a Kroftas?” and I’ve explained it this way:

“Kroftas are a gnome-like people that are harmless when they’re kept cold but if you let them warm up they become a mean. They’ll try to steal your shoes so they can nibble at your toes – Kroftas like toes – and they try to lick between your toes with long snaky tongues. After they’ve had their fill they become rude and poke at you and become really bad.” I usually shudder at this point and finish by saying, “It’s not good to heat a Kroftas.” Doors usually shut faster after this story. At least for a while.

Actually, the Kroftas were a family that lived about a quarter mile from our farm house and they were nice enough people. My Dad started using the phrase to emphasize how much heat we were letting out from our wood burning stove when he was the one who had to haul the wood and stoke the fire. The phrase just caught on. My brothers and I used it on each other when it was our turn to haul and stoke and we’ve passed the phrase down. So did my sisters, though they never hauled wood or stoked.

I have a grandchild on the way and he or she will likely hear the phrase more than once. When the time comes to explain about Kroftas I’m not going to talk about farm houses and wood burning stoves. I’m going to tell about the gnomes. Just to have the doors shut a little faster in winter. At least for a while.

Not So Secret, Victoria

I don’t know how I got on this mailing list but Victoria’s Secret keeps sending me brochures introducing new products, telling me about sales and offering free stuff. The one that came today had a card I could turn in at one of their stores for free panties I think are missing material in some of the crucial spots. That won’t fly here. Pat doesn’t allow holes in clothing. She’s thrown away my clothes as soon as I get a scratch hole worked in where I want it. Something that comes pre-done doesn’t stand a chance.

I also got a coupon for $10 off a Dream Angels bra. I’m not sure exactly what that is but I suspect it’s a bra with feathers or wings or maybe both. I’m fairly sure I don’t need it. The last time I had cleavage was when I had to wear a suit with a vest. I hadn’t worn the suit in a while and my shape had changed to the point that the vest pushed some parts of me up where they didn’t belong. Cleavage. And the under wire was pokey. I got a new suit and everything’s back where it belongs. Dream Angels would only confuse things. The feathers could be kind of fun, though, at least once in a while. Maybe I’ll stop by and see how many I could get with a $10 coupon.

A Grammar Question

It was a social gathering but just about everyone there was involved in Education in some way. Most were elementary teachers, a few worked in class rooms or in low level administration and they were talking shop. I’m not in education. The closest I get is once every few years when they want me to vote on a school referendum, so at this gathering I just sat back and listened as the topic changed from student behavior to curriculum and teaching challenges. One of the teachers started up about the difficulty she was having showing students how to diagram sentences.

“They don’t get it,” she said, “and honestly who even remembers it.” I was sitting back quietly and taking it in when she turned and pointed at me. “Do you know what a dangling participle is?”

“Yeah,” I said, “ever since puberty.”

Conversation stopped for a moment, then the group went on to talk about history. I know a bit about history but no one asked me another question. I’m not sure why.

It's A Science Thing

I like talking about science with my kids. They’re further along than I am. I missed most of the science classes when I was in school. I’m more of a liberal arts guy but over time I’ve come to like science. Watching our snow banks go down even though it’s been below freezing, Chris and I started talking about the process of sublimation – that’s when a solid like snow goes directly to a gas (water vapor) without stopping at a liquid state. You can’t really see the process except that the snow bank gets smaller.

Taking it to another level, Chris asked what it’s called when a liquid turns to gas.

Without really thinking I said, “Beer farts.”

I probably shouldn’t have missed so many classes.