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Son Save Yourself, I'll Go Down With The Meatloaf By J.P. Nix
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Some years ago when my wife Nancy and I were first married, I took upon the task of having supper cooked and on the table when she got home from work. We usually had 30 minutes per afternoon to chat and have a meal together before I had to leave for work. Little did I know at the time that spending only 30 minutes a day together would get me out of some of the worst predicaments that I somehow always seem to get myself in. My wife reminds me of Mr. Phileas Fogg, the Jules Verne character from the novel, Around the World in Eighty Days. She is an exact person, always punctual, with everything in her life having a place, and always in that place. No excuses, no exceptions! Those were the house rules, and I loving her so, followed this rule to the best of my ability. But one day… My stepson Dorsey came home from school this particular afternoon at around 2:45. He plopped himself down on the sofa in front of the television without a word to me. This in itself is not out of the ordinary, because my stepson is a rather private person. Teenagers usually are. However, his daily responsibilities to the household are to make two pitchers of tea, and take the trash out. Allow me to clarify the reason behind the two tea pitchers; my wife can only drink tea without sugar, myself being a true southern will not drink unsweetened tea. Therefore, one pitcher is to please her, the other for me. Every week at the grocery store we always buy one pound ground beef, no more, no less. Exactly one pound. And from wife’s hand written instructions to make meatloaf, I am to use the whole package of ground beef. Each time I had made this recipe, the meatloaf turned out great; but this particular week, the package was two pounds of ground beef. Why? I have no idea. To this day, it is still a mystery to me. Why this woman that I have known and loved for years suddenly changed her habits? I may never know the answer, and I’m not sure I want to know. My wife is always home on time, 4:00 p.m., 1600 hrs. No later, and no sooner. She is always punctual. No excuses, no exceptions! You could set a clock by her habits. The time is 3:00, time to make the meatloaf. I prepare it according to my directions: 1 package of ground beef, 1 cup of uncooked oatmeal, 1 onion, and 1 green pepper, 1 small can of tomato sauce. Mix the ingredients together and then spoon the mixture in a loaf pan. Simple enough, don’t you think? I had done it a few times before this incident, and it turned out perfect. However with the one extra pound of ground beef, things soon would begin to go wrong. At 3:40, I begin to realize that my stepson was not even going to attempt to do his chores. That meant only thing: yelling from his mother. Not at me, but to her son who even today has not learned to do the things his mother asks to avoid conflict. I am one who likes to avoid a war of words between anyone, and will do anything to prevent a yelling match between elders and siblings. However, on this day I learned if things are going to happen anyway, then just let them happen. So I grabbed the pot that we always make tea in out of the cupboard, and then I grabbed another that we don’t use to make tea in. I had to make two pitchers of tea, quickly. My wife would be home in fifteen minutes. After the two pots of tea were on, I notice smoke crawling out of the oven. Immediately I opened the oven’s door, and whoosh! Fire came blazing out. Smoke then flooded the kitchen. “What’s that I smell?” Dorsey asked from the living room. I grabbed a towel and started fanning the oven. Walking in from the living room, I heard him cough, then say, “What happened? What can I do?’ Still fanning the oven, I saw the clock on the wall, 3:55. “Quick!” I said. “Open every door, turn on every fan. Your mama will be home in five minutes.” And off he went; I heard windows opening, fans coming on. In front of me on top of the stove, through the smoke, I saw two pots of tea starting to boil. “J.P!” my stepson called from the upstairs hallway. “I’ve opened all the windows and turned on all the fans. What do you want me to do now?” That’s all I could think for him to do, realizing that this burden was mine to bear alone, I said, “Son save yourself, I’ll go down with the meatloaf!” And I heard his bedroom door close. At this moment, the entire house is in an uproar. I could hear the neighborhood’s dogs starting to bark. As I fanned smoke out the kitchen window, I saw a black cat dart across my deck. I could hear thunder rolling across the sky. I closed the oven’s door, and coughed from the smoke that I was now surrounded by. It had diminished enough so I could now see what I was doing. However, I did leave the meatloaf in the oven. “At least Nancy will have something to drink when she comes home,” or so I thought. I grabbed the glass tea picture out of the fridge, then the teapot off the stove. Sitting the glass tea picture on the counter when you pour hot tea in it was a bad mistake.
When the pitcher broke, tea went everywhere; all over the counter top, down the cabinets, on to the floor, and the floor rugs. And then the front door opened; and there she stood. She didn’t rush in the way you might expect to ask, “what happened?” nor even “are you all right?” She just there at the door with her briefcase in one hand, and her shoes in the other. Her hair that had been ever so perfect that morning when she left, looked liked it had been mangled during the day. She had already a bad day, and now it would get worse. “John Paul!” she screamed. “What have you done now!” I guess what made it worse was that I didn’t offer an explanation right away, or even try to make excuses for what had happened. I just stood there with a surprise look on my face. I can’t tell you if it was real or not, but at that moment it was as if red fire shot out of her eyes and went right through my heart. “What happened?” she asked standing next to me in a loud disappointing voice that only spouses can have. “I don’t know what happened,” I replied. “I was trying to cook dinner and make tea when everything just got crazy.” “What happened to the glass tea pitcher?” “I just poured tea in it, and it broke.” “You don’t pour hot tea in a cold pitcher!” she fired back. “Why are you using this pot to make tea in any way?”
“Well, you didn’t have any tea, and I didn’t have any. So I was trying to rush things and used two pots.” “Your not suppose to use two pots!” she yelled this as if it was common knowledge. I must have skipped that page in the tea-making handbook. “Why?” as if I had the nerve to ask. “Because it stains the pot!” “Oh,” I thought, making a mental note, “have to remember that.” “Where’s Dorsey?” she was still yelling. “He’s suppose to make the tea.” At this time I realize that we were not going to argue. I had already lost the battle, the war, and the rest of the world, so to speak. Might as well go down in flames. “Well, I didn’t think he was going to do it,” I answered. “So I decided to do it for him.” “You know Dorsey is suppose to do his own chores!” she snapped, waking over to the bottom of the staircase yelling for her son. He crept out of his room, and waited for the prosecutor to pass judgment on both of us. We had been caught breaking the one rule of the house: everything has a place, and should be in that place, no excuses and no exceptions! “You know your suppose to do your chores,” she said in an authoritative tone that mothers have. “Why is J. P. doing your chores?” Brilliantly, the honor roll student came up with one of the best answers ever invented, and said, “I don’t know.” And then she turned to me, repeating her
question. “Why are you doing Dorsey’s chores. You know his
responsibilities. Why did you them?” “Get out of this kitchen!” she yelled. “You’ve got to have something for dinner before you go to work.” That was when she opened the oven’s door to find the burnt meatloaf. “What did you do?” The two pounds of ground beef had risen out of the loaf pan that was designed for one pound of ground beef, and had spilled out on to the coils. She worked like a mad woman in the kitchen, trying to savage the dinner I had ruined. I stood at the corner of the dining room and kitchen area watching her work so persistent. Her eyes that had turned red and shot fire out of them at me, I swear to you, burnt through the back of her head, parted her hair, saw me watching, and she screamed with out turning around, “Stop staring at me!” After she took the loaf pan out, and dumped the meatloaf on to a plate, she then forced me to eat the burnt meatloaf. And I was glad that’s all I had to do. I had
to leave for work, but I did call her four hours later. She told me she
had been cleaning the oven ever since I had left. That was some years
ago, and I haven’t made a meatloaf since. The End |