Dinner For Two

by Florence

OK. It’s official.
I’m going into the Faux Pas Hall Of Fame- or straight to Hell- which ever arrives most promptly on my e ticket ride to Holy Shitsville
The first dinner I take my new daughter in law out for, I wind up spraying her; with water shooting out of my mouth-in the restaurant.
I’m choking on a rice kernel and water and my hands can’t quite fly to cover my mouth fast enough to keep me from convulsively splattering water all over her-clear across the table!
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. It’s like being caught in every cartoon you’ve ever seen where the animated animal guffaws liquid like a fountain from its mouth to douse the character opposite it.
Really, it’s exactly like that in real life! Only I never thought it would be me doing the spitting and becoming a fountain on my own daughter in law- in public for crying out loud!
Omigod! I’m choking and dying of embarrassment all at the same time while she keeps asking, “Are you all right?” as she’s brushing herself off from the gusher she just got.
That gal has cool.
Me? I’d be in shock if any of my former 3 mothers in law had spit all over me at a restaurant- or anywhere for that matter!
And still, Hope keeps repeating, as I’m choking and laughing and gasping all at the same time; trying to look like this is no big deal; like I did not just create the biggest holy crapolie scene in animation or real life ever, “Are you all right?”
“Fine. Fine,” I manage, and thank God that the restaurant only has a few other customers in there with us.
Still… a scene is a scene and, though I may be blonde, I suspect I’m not invisible nor was the blast of water and uncontrollable choking low on the sound barrier scale.
Actually, I’m dying here….of embarrassment.
I continue my descent into Hell; make bad jokes which basically cover up nothing. I know Hope is an intelligent, neat, proper young woman and I now feel like a clod who should never be allowed out in society without a muzzle.
Just as I’m thinking, ‘she’ll never ask me to go out ever again; won’t want to be seen in public with me-ever-in this or any other lifetime,’ she repeats her mantra, “Are you all right?” adding sweetly, “I’m going to keep asking until you are…”
Got to love her.
Cough, cough, fine, fine, sputter, sputter dies down.
Smile…smile…smile…
Omigod, I might live.
I don’t know which is worse…that I could have died or that I will survive this calamity.
Looking anyone in the eye will be the shonda that rises above the whole debacle happening in the first place.
Thanks God.
Thanks Angels.
It isn’t bad enough that this year you’ve shit on me more times than I want to recall.
It isn’t bad enough that I go out into the world in mortification; looking like an out of work mime or a crime scene investigator; wearing white cotton gloves from the glue contamination the pool people visited upon our house and stuck us with this summer.
It’s enough already.
All I wanted was a simple dinner out with my daughter in law at the sushi restaurant we both love -right in town. (A place I might add, I’m probably barred from now! God, no, not the spritzing one again. Bad for business!)
Was that too much to ask for without mishap and mayhem?
Criminiddlies! Cut me a break here, Universe.
Instead, I take her out for the first time since the wedding and what’s she gonna say when her friends ask how that went?
She can answer quite truthfully, “ I don’t know if my mother in law really likes me or not, she spit on me.“
“No shit!”
“No. No shit. Spit”
As we leave the restaurant, I’m off kilter; all wobbly brained, I make dribbly small talk, like asking her where she parked her car and, again, step in it up to my eyeballs.
She must think I’m losing my mind along with my manners.
The car is exactly where we left it- right at the curb; two spots down from the front door of the restaurant!
Inside my head I think, ‘Oh crap. Why can’t I shut up?’
If all the air is going out of my mouth, there’s no oxygen getting to my brain. Isn’t this a law of physics?
Help me! I’ve fallen and I can’t shut up.
We get home; nice nice, she gives me cds of the wedding pics and I dash up the path to my front porch, waving bye bye; lots of “we should do this again…let’s not wait so long…yadiyadi…”
Smile… smile… smile… still can’t shut my mouth.
I get in the door and lean back up against it like, ‘Whew! The hunted animal has escaped the feds and made it to the mattresses of the safe house.”
Tom interrupts my brief reverie as he sings out from down the hall around in the kitchen, “Hi Hon, how was dinner with your new daughter in law?”
“I spit on her.”
“What?”
“I spit all over her.”
“Whaaat?”
“You heard me. Like a living cartoon. Sprayed water all over her like an involuntary sputtering machine…ratatatatatat!”
“You’re kidding.”
“Hell, no. You can’t can’t make this stuff up. I’m outlawed in three states.”
“Omigod.”
“Yeah. Went out to dinner for the first time with my new daughter in law and spit on her- in public. That’s what she can report to her mom, her friends and to my son….”
Omigod!
Tonight, Chris’ll call her from his road trip and ask how dinner went with Mom and she can say, “Your mother spit on me.”
Omigod.
“Don’t worry Hon. It probably wasn’t that bad”…this guy can try to make shit look like it has a prayer of becoming chocolate mousse.
I escape to the bathroom to throw myself into a shower, hoping that shame and embarrassment will wash off with soap and water.
I’m muttering, “No. It was that bad-and more. It couldn’t possibly get worse.”
And then I look in the mirror and notice there is a patch of green seaweed right in the middle of my front teeth.
Smile… smile… smile.