A dish of peas brings much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth
A dish of peas brings much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth
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The sheer cruelty of inflicting peas on children at teatime meets with the response it so richly deserves. My wife came in from work to find a funereal hush. ‘Hello?’ she said tentatively, perhaps thinking her entire family had been abducted or, worse, were attempting an insipid practical joke at her expense. My wife doesn’t care for surprises. For years, she’s made it very clear that if I ever threw her a surprise birthday party, she would simply scream, exit the building, and our next communication would be via the law firm managing our divorce.
‘We’re in here’ I said, eventually, in a tone that suggested things were not going well. As she entered the kitchen, she found us at the dinner table, me glowering and our daughter in tears. Our son immediately leapt from his seat to hug her, and was soon sobbing into her dress.
At this point, she knew exactly what had happened, with one look at the two untouched plates of fish fingers and mash, with peas visible in every possible location around them. There were scatterings of the unloved legumes everywhere; on the table, on the floor, under the fridge. Some had pooled in a plant pot by the window, others were still in motion, slowly rolling toward the sink by the back wall.
I had endeavoured to introduce some vegetal variety to their dinner, in the hopes that their – in fairness, long-established – distaste for peas had worn off. This was folly. The moment I’d sat the offending orbs down in front of them, their grief-stricken faces told me that their hatred for peas had not abated. Absence had not, in this instance, made their hearts grow fonder. No, since their last exposure to the concept of peas, they had clearly spent every waking moment seized by torrid nightmares of their return.
