An acquaintance of ours joined us for dinner one evening. I watched in fascination as she carefully assembled every forkful of food in the same manner. Cut small cube of meat, spear with fork. With knife, apply coating of mashed potato to back of fork, using meat for foundation. Working from bottom to top, press bits of each vegetable into the mashed potato, ending with 3-4 peas. Stick entire forkful into mouth, tines down.
She somehow managed to estimate the total amount of all the different types of food, and divide it up in such a way as to include some of each food in every bite. It was quite a performance. And I thought my OCD was bad....!
Having a houseful of rowdy boys has banished any semblance of daintiness from mealtimes at our place. Extreme gentility in table manners now makes me giggle. Like the time I was on an airplane, and the hostess had just handed out little foil packets of miniature rice crisps. I'd ripped the top off mine and was about to up-end it into my gob — there couldn't have been more than a tablespoon or two's worth of crisps in there — when I noticed the woman sitting next to me. She had carefully unfolded her serviette and arranged it on her table. Then she shook the crisps out onto the serviette, folded up the empty packet, and ate the crisps with her fingers, one at a time. My eyes were watering from the effort of trying not to laugh.
