Food Fight

When you think of  “food fight”, you naturally think of a bunch of crazy students in a cafeteria, lobbing food at one another, or the great scene from the movie, Animal House. Yes, that is one kind of food fight. But, the one I want to talk about has nothing to do with flinging food.  My kind of food fight was personal. Like family personal.

 No, our family never sat at the dinner table, throwing food at each other. No one would have wanted to clean it up. This had nothing to do with the dinner table. This was about the art of stealing food and then laughing in your face. I’ll explain.

 My mom used to make chicken noodle soup for us for lunch every once in a while. I’m sure it wasn’t homemade. I didn’t like carrots or other vegetables floating around in the soup. I wanted noodles and that was about it. But, my sister always knew when the soup was ready before me. She was a sneaky little mole. I say mole because she wore coke-bottled glasses. So, the little mole would walk into the family room, carrying a big soup bowl and a spoon in one hand, and a sleeve of saltine crackers in the other. She would laugh at me in a little, sneaky, hiss, and then put her bowl on the coffee table. Yep, she did it again. She went into the kitchen and scooped most of the noodles out of the soup, leaving three strands of noodles and broth. Damnit.

 She did this to me all of the time. I tried to get Mom to stop it. “Mom, Cheryl took all of the noodles out of the soup!” And my mom would always answer with an impartial response….. ”Vickie, no one likes a tattletale.”  Yeah, impartial my ass. I think she would sneak into the bedroom and tell Cheryl that the soup was ready before I even knew about it. My mom knew I was picky and really should be happy I would eat something. I liked noodles. But, no, Cheryl and her sinister laugh got to the soup first.

 I don’t know where my brother was when all this happened. Probably at military school. My mom sent him off to Linsly Military School because she said he was lazy. Poor kid. He rarely got to be home to eat the brothy soup.  One day something out of the ordinary happened. I thought I would wait in the kitchen, pretending to have a conversation with my mom and would get the soup  first. I was oh so smart. But, no, that was not to happen. My mom sent me to the basement to get a package of ground beef out of the massive freezer. Oh, so this is how it is going to be? I would walk down there, knowing full well that Cheryl would be scooping out the noodles when I got back upstairs. “Why can’t Cheryl go get it?”  My mom just looked at me. “Well, Vickie, I didn’t ask your sister, now did I?  Besides, she doesn’t know where it is.”    As I opened the door to the basement, I replied, “It’s the big white thing against the wall.” I know she meant the ground beef,in the big mess of white-paper-wrapped dead animal food, but I was now beyond suspicious. It was obvious. It was an adopted vs. the natural child syndrome. Yeah, she was playing favorites. Fine. Whatever.

"I have no idea where she is."

 So, naturally, when I came back upstairs with the wrapped  ground beef that always smelled like pee beef, Cheryl was at the stove, scooping the noodles out, snickering like that cartoon dog. I just handed the package to my mom and went out in the family room.

 But, something wonderful happened. My mom went downstairs to wash clothes or drink out of a flask or something and Cheryl came into the family room with the bowl of steaming soup and a spoon in one hand and a sleeve of saltine crackers in the other, like every freaking time. But, today, a miracle occurred. As she sat on the couch, and laughed that shitty laugh one more time, adding a belly shake for good measure, she tipped over the bowl. The steaming hot soup went all over her.

My mouth opened. Like really wide. She froze. And started yelling. “Vickie, help!” I just looked at her and said, “What?” Like I didn’t see the noodles lying on her like a shag carpet. She was in pain. “You know, I don’t know how many times Mom has told me to let the soup cool a bit before eating it.  She must have never told you that.”  Cheryl had a way around that too. Usually, when she would bring her steaming hot soup out into the family room, she would lick her spoon and put it in the soup and then walk away to let it cool a bit before eating. Like a freakin Goldilocks. She knew I wouldn’t steal her soup since she licked the spoon. This time she decided to wear her food and I just didn’t care how much she was burnt. 

 I started laughing at her. She was still frozen, crying out for me to help her. I thought I could make a deal. “If I help you, will you promise to share the noodles with me?” She nodded yes. So,I scraped the noodles off of her arms and legs and she really did have red marks. Felt a little bad. Not really.

 So, of course, I cleaned her up and no one got soup that day. Well, I had one noodle broth soup with oyster crackers. I also had a sister who never took more than her share again.

Well, until the next food fight.(My next blog, Whoopie Pie Wars, coming soon)