A wise old adage, they say. Well, I don’t know what Q’s are, but I know a lot about minding peas. I’ve minded them ever since I tasted the pureed peas from a Gerber’s baby food jar.
Because peas were among the very few veggies my dad would tolerate, a big bowl of garden green peas appeared at least once a week at our family dinner table. And at their sight a wave of nausea would stir inside my tummy.
One night I was six or seven when a particularly pungent portion of peas was placed on my plate. I flared into open rebellion. No one noticed at first as I sat silently with my arms across my chest. After the usual chit-chat (“How was school today?” Mumble) my mother remarked that I should “Eat your peas.”
“I’m not eating any peas!” I declared, surprised at my outburst.
Mom could unnerve a foe by arching a single eyebrow. “Oh really?” was all she said.
Next came the usual litany I knew well.
“Eat your peas or no dessert.”
Fine. A fair trade-off.
Then: “Eat your peas or I’ll send them to the starving Armenians.”
(My mother was raised during World War I before the Armenians were displaced by the starving Chinese.)
` Fine again.
After a lull in the Cold War, I pushed my chair back, ready to slither away.
“You’re not going anywhere!” my mother barked. “You will eat your peas or go directly to bed!”
I was in the middle of a cost-benefit analysis when another chair scraped and my father rose. He leaned into me and whispered into my ear: “Eat your peas of we’ll grind them up and give them to you in an enema.”
When I grew older I would come to understand Dad’s dry sense of humor, but at that early age his witticisms sailed over my head. All I could think of was when my upset tummy was purged by jamming a tube up my heiney that connected to a macabre hot water bag.
Dad departed and the détente began. I sat alone glowering down at my cold peas while Mom washed dishes, glancing through the window in the kitchen door to spot an attempted breakout.
Hours went by. Okay maybe one hour, but it was extended by the excruciatingly slow tick-tock of the wall clock above me.
Suddenly the kitchen door flew open, revealing Captain Queeg in a skirt. “All right, the time has come for you to eat your peas or go to bed,” she crackled with pointed finger.
“All right! All right!” I shouted back. With penultimate petulance I jammed a fistful of peas into my mouth and stood up to leave. Maybe the peas had started to ferment, but the overpowering pungency of the moosh in my mouth triggered my gag reflex like a torch to a cannon. Out spewed a green volley that quickly sped me to the bedroom in tears.
I probably could have claimed child abuse by today’s standards, but I was satisfied to have won the war. A passive beneficiary was my little sister, who had witnessed the skirmish and won’t eat peas to this day.
Since then I have reached adulthood, but not maturity. Fast forward to when I was fiftyish and planning a trip to Scotland with my wife. In July we booked a night in September at a Glasgow bread and breakfast advertising that the lady owner enjoyed serving dinner. Perfect, as we’d be stopping after dark and didn’t want to be rushing off to hunt for a restaurant.
It’s now arrival time in September. I can see end-of-the-season burnout etched in the sullen face of our hostess. Moreover, we’re the only ones seated at a table for twelve in a formal antique-filled dining room with a dimly-lit crystal chandelier.
Grimly, the hostess serves. Two plates are plunked down with normal portions of lamb chop and potatoes. Soon the kitchen door swings open again and in comes a volleyball-sized silver bowl heaped high with steaming, emerald-green peas. I would have made do with a bowl of ball bearings. The mound is so steep that a loud sneeze or the placement if one more pea at the summit could cause an avalanche.
I speculate as to why. Our hostess only knows how to cook for twelve? It’s pea harvest time in the backyard garden? Or, more likely, my departed mother’s puckish spirit is visiting her native Scotland and has told the B&B lady that her son loves peas.
What to do? Something tells me this is a proffer that should not be refused. We’d be expected to excavate a sincere dent in the pile. Since one quality I had sought when seeking a bride was that she despise peas (I shall devote another article to carrots), we face a major disposal problem.
Might the peas possibly populate the potted plants?
Weighing the options with the eye of an actuary, I postulate that there is:
(1) a 22% chance that our hostess will water the plants before we leave but will be either too myopic or preoccupied to notice.
(2) an 8% chance that the peas will mulch into the potting soil overnight.
(3) a 20% chance that she will spot the carpets of peas and report us to some B&B industry tribunal that will blacklist us throughout Britain.
This left a 50% chance that we could abscond the next morning before the crime was discovered. So we went with the odds, buttressed by the hope that our hostess would soon realize to her delight that peas make for an excellent fertilizer.
As we sped off just after breakfast, my wife said, “Stop! We need to go back. I left my brush and comb in the bathroom.”
“No way,” I said. “We’ll buy new ones.”
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