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KITCHEN TABLE RUCKUS
The book I'm reading... "Kitchen Table Memoirs" is authored by famous Australian writers with long standing personalities: journalist, comedian, hospital, stage theatre, t.v. and radio workers, chefs, culinarian and restaurant critics, etc. Nick Richardson, who wrote the longest 10-pages Introduction in this book asked, "What makes your memory so different or similar to mine?"
That question indeed has jogged my brain and triggered a memory about kitchen experiences; since I am the eldest girl in the family, my main task was centred in taking care of my members' insatiable gastronomic sacs. The kitchen was always my domain.
I have my own hilarious childhood memory about a kitchen table. It was not ours. It was not our home kitchen. It was our hosts' long huge kitchen table made of a heavy wood. We young kids were all seated to eat first and the adults would have theirs after.
Four of us siblings along with the hosts' children and other families' kids were told to be quiet and to behave while on the table of grace.
Being a 'churchy people' they reminded us to pray first. My father having taught us how to pray was feeling proud to present his eldest son to say the grace. The little rascal grinned and obliged. He told us what to do, then he prayed:
"Our hands we fold Our heads we bow For food and drink We thank Thee now.
Amen."
Except that he re-worded the last line with his own nincompoop's version, and said it in our local dialect -"Kalibang kanding" which when translated to English, it means "The goat shits" … Yes, the noun and the verb.
I will leave everything in your imagination what happened next because I'm sure my father was silently hoping the earth would swallow him.
The book I'm reading... "Kitchen Table Memoirs" is authored by famous Australian writers with long standing personalities: journalist, comedian, hospital, stage theatre, t.v. and radio workers, chefs, culinarian and restaurant critics, etc. Nick Richardson, who wrote the longest 10-pages Introduction in this book asked, "What makes your memory so different or similar to mine?"
That question indeed has jogged my brain and triggered a memory about kitchen experiences; since I am the eldest girl in the family, my main task was centred in taking care of my members' insatiable gastronomic sacs. The kitchen was always my domain.
I have my own hilarious childhood memory about a kitchen table. It was not ours. It was not our home kitchen. It was our hosts' long huge kitchen table made of a heavy wood. We young kids were all seated to eat first and the adults would have theirs after.
Four of us siblings along with the hosts' children and other families' kids were told to be quiet and to behave while on the table of grace.
Being a 'churchy people' they reminded us to pray first. My father having taught us how to pray was feeling proud to present his eldest son to say the grace. The little rascal grinned and obliged. He told us what to do, then he prayed:
"Our hands we fold Our heads we bow For food and drink We thank Thee now.
Amen."
Except that he re-worded the last line with his own nincompoop's version, and said it in our local dialect -"Kalibang kanding" which when translated to English, it means "The goat shits" … Yes, the noun and the verb.
I will leave everything in your imagination what happened next because I'm sure my father was silently hoping the earth would swallow him.