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Table Habits

The Source

My dad got me to thinking last week when he mentioned a friend of his who would always order two pancakes but eat just one. He said he ordered the top flapjack to keep the bottom one warm. The man liked warmed bottoms. Dad said it was a fact. Allen would order his two cakes then gently lift the top one to carve up the pancake on the bottom….then leave the restaurant with his top cake cooling. Nothing is quite so weird, I suppose, as our eating habits. One of my best friends will not eat anything in a salad that’s not green. Although I’d bet the farm on the fact that I could blindfold him and he wouldn’t know a piece of purple cabbage from a green one, he will spend half the mealtime carefully picking out the non-green items and pushing them to the side of his plate. Strange. Another friend cannot eat a meal without licking his fingers. In fact, he licks with a rather large pop, often drawing the attention of folks at the neighboring tables who become concerned that perhaps a mouse is drowning in a nearby water glass. And yes, he’s also a knife-licker. Most knife-lickers will admit that finger licking was their entryway drug into the dark world of knife licking. And I’m sure that every family has at least one “no touch” in the brood…the little kid who has a fit if his peas touch his potatoes or his steak nudges up against his fries. Trouble is, little junior often grows up to become Big Bob who can cause more than a few stares at corporate lunches as he looks at his plate then starts carving his own private Ponderosa into various pastures. When I travel overseas I’m often the object of some mealtime staring. I believe we’re the only nationality in the world that plays silverware relay while cutting up our food. Most of the civilized world keep the fork in one hand and the knife in the other, but Americans have developed this peculiar habit of cutting, switching hands, eating, then switching back. Sort of like stainless steel ping-pong. I’m sure we’ve all been a bit embarrassed by a friend or relative who uses the “scoop method” when maneuvering fork. They ball up their fist as if they’re going to clobber their tablemates and proceed to shovel the food into their hopper. This may come from watching too many episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies. My college roommate would not grab a hamburger the normal way, grasping each side of the bun with opposing fingers and gnawing away. He’d rest the sandwich on the back of his left hand and balance it with the right. He said this kept him from getting ketchup on the inside of his hands. As a result, I usually ordered our food “to go.” Then there are the spooners. I think they’re a dying breed, perhaps raised during the Great Depression when tableware was in short supply. They can and often do eat everything with a spoon. Anthropological note: spooners are nearly always scoopers. See: Beverly Hillbillies above. Sometimes it’s the eating establishments themselves that force some of us into such ridiculous table habits. Warning: if you are a waitress in a lobster restaurant, do not put a bib on me. It’s not cute. It’s not even necessary. It’s ridiculous. I won’t reach up and break your arm in front of all these nice people, but the thought will cross my mind. The same goes for these fancy restaurants where the waiters reach down and place my napkin in my lap. The Internet has unfortunately opened up much of my life to the entire world, but my lap is still my own private domain. You won’t be paying my cleaning bill, so keep you mitts out of my lap. Of course at the opposite end of the etiquette wheel are the overly polite eaters. You know them. You may have married one. Nothing…absolutely nothing may be eaten with one’s fingers. Corn must be cut off the cob, thank you very much. 
A fried chicken leg must be ceremoniously stripped from the offending bone. I’ve never eaten popcorn with one of these overly proper epicureans. Do they suck it through a straw? Okay…full disclosure, I have a few gastronomic peccadillos of my own. When I eat cupcakes I eat the whole thing, wrapper and all (foil wrappers excluded.) I don’t know why. It’s something we did growing up and I just like the texture of a soaked-through piece of paper. And no matter what Emily Post may decree, I cannot eat without having both hands above the table. I need one to eat and one to talk. Sorry. I can’t talk without using my hands. Besides, it’ll leave one hand free to slap the guy licking his fingers and separating his lettuce.