Skillet Wars
worldper
I used to write inane articles about family life and my lack of a clue in it all, so I thought I would start again with the blog. Please note these are more or less actual converstions - the profanity is edited out.
It’s Saturday. It’s breakfast. It’s lunch. It’s battle royal near the skillet. Why, you ask? Because we own a stove/oven and a microwave and a toaster oven, but none get used as much as the electric skillet that sits on the counter between the satanic toaster – a demonic device that could incinerate solid granite – and the lonely stove top.
The problem starts because the teenager lost his internal clock. A teenage clock starts at noon. Anytime prior to that is non-existent. So he rolls down stairs at 12:01 pm looking for breakfast. Never mind that he actually rose at 10:00 am to play a Park District basketball game. That occurred before noon, so it didn’t actually happen.
“I want pancakes,” he declares and collapses on the couch, the strain of walking down a flight of stairs taking its toll.
Meanwhile, two younger ones are making elaborate paper airplanes and bouncing them off my head.
“Who are you?” I say to the blond. I don’t think he’s one of mine.
“Cheese sandwich,” he says. Not the question I asked and I still want to know how he got in the house.
“Plain hamburger,” says the other one. Now he looks sort of familiar like maybe I made him.
“Pancakes,” says the couch.
So I toast up a cheese sandwich and toss a frozen hamburger patty on the skillet while the spouse appears from wherever spouses appear from and mixes pancake batter.
“I need the skillet,” she says.
There’s a corner you can use,” I explain.
“Why are you cooking a hamburger on the skillet!” she says, loud too.
“And a cheese sandwich,” I explain proudly. “It’s lunch time.”
“You’re ruining everything.”
“I got here first.”
And here’s where’s it all goes to pot, or pan. The spouse fries up the pancakes in a frying pan. The teenager approaches like a tiger stalking his prey.
“I’m not eating those. You’re supposed to cook them on the skillet,” he says.
The spouse blows a fuse. “The heck with everyday in this family,” she says (what she really said rhymes with truck). “Dad stole the skillet. He can eat these.”
“I hate pan fried pancakes,” I say, rubbing salt in the wound.
We now cook in silence and she dishes a pile of pan fried pancakes in front of the teenager, who devours them like they were made before noon. They disappear into the pit of youth, stored for important things like sleeping all day. The hamburger and cheese sandwich have left the skillet and a puddle of grease is still bubbling on one side.
“You going to clean that off?” she says.
“I’ll get to it,” I lie.
Grease on the skillet? How dare I allow it? So she cleans it and the frying pan and I attempt to make myself a ham sandwich.
“You know you could use the skillet to make a hot ham and cheese,” she says. “Here, let me do it.”
“I got it,” I say.
And we arm wrestle and I lose.
Anyway, in case you're curious, ham and cheese is tasty when made with a skillet.
Litopia is the winner