My grandmother’s recent 95th birthday celebration provided just such an opportunity.
The party was held at a chain restaurant specializing in genuine Chinese cuisine, and featured an eat-as-much-as-you-want-but-don’t-blame-us-for-your-indigestion buffet that included many authentic staples of East Asian cooking, such as French fries.
In a large room reserved for my grandmother’s celebration sat dozens of relatives who, I suspect, were quietly marveling at the stylish results of my $13 haircut.
“Is that really Frankie? His hair, it’s all combed in the same direction and most of it isn’t even sticking up.”
“And I don’t see a single blackhead on his nose.”
Yes, I had entered the restaurant as a married man and father who long ago put away childlike things and embraced the role of responsible adult.
(This is true unless it is July 1 and I am fulfilling my patriotic duty by unleashing an arsenal of illegal bottle rockets on a neighbourhood park while my wife and young daughters watch from a safe and sane distance of approximately two football fields.)
My relatives were about to get a taste of the new and improved “Frankie” – serious-minded, mature and deserving of a seat at the grown-ups’ table.
Which I was, right up to the moment my wife and children pointed out the bright red splotches of rib sauce that, unknown to me, covered the top third of my khaki pants.
Until then, I was the picture of respectability.
Presented with the opportunity to eat from an unlimited supply of deep-fried chicken balls, for example, the Frankie of the past would have plundered the restaurant’s warming tables with the enthusiasm of a cat in a tuna-canning factory.
Frank the Adult chose his dinner wisely, piling on healthy vegetables and avoiding anything battered for fear that my wife would make me ride my bicycle when we returned home after a two-hour stay that included much reminiscing with relatives who never once mentioned the sizeable sauce stains on my trousers.
The experience can be shown in the following mathematical equation: number of relatives encountered (35) divided by the percentage of pant legs splattered with sauce (33) = my dignity (minus 10).
The stains, which were revealed to me with great glee as we left the restaurant, stood out as incriminating evidence of a bungled attempt to transfer a sweet-and-sour pork rib from the dinner plate to my mouth, the rib having slipped from the tines of the fork and bounced into my lap before hitting the carpeted floor.
Forensic testing later determined the sauce to be of a luminescent variety that may have in fact been manufactured by the same factory that produces the liquid seen floating inside lava lamps.
Just kidding.
Only Frankie would believe that.
fmatys@simcoe.com
