clearing your plate
recently my brother told a story he didn't realize was really disturbing. late last summer, due to some major family drama, my young cousin zack came to stay with my parents for a few weeks. zack is the youngest child of my uncle john. john, as many of my aunts and uncles are, is a strict disciplinarian. he called it spanking, we called it beating. but in my family you didn't mess with how other people raised their children. you just tried to get around it. one of john's oddest rules is that his children always had to clean their plates. which didn't make any sense becaus john and his then-wife would fill the plate for the child. and they would fill it high, often with food they knew the kid didn't like. but the kid couldn't leave the table until his or her plate was clean. at holidays my mother would wait until john and his then-wife weren't looking and put their food on mine and my siblings' plates. or she would simply eat off zack's or his sisters' plates. since she didn't mind if we threw food away, i would regularly throw away a plate of someone else's food. i think the clean plate rule comes from the sensibilities of poverty. when you are poor, you don't waste food. i wonder if he ever thought that maybe if he let his kids make thier own plates they might not be tempted to waste so much food. i wonder. but the disturbing part is that as a joke my brother and his fiance told zack one night at dinner that he couldn't leave the table til he cleared his plate. and the boy, though he's a teenager now, sat there and tried to do so. i guess the fear of the father is a powerful force.
posted by lindsey @ 3:57 PM
1 comments
