Just before our Father picked us up, my little sister and I had a blazing row.
‘Look,’ She hissed at me furiously as we walked to the restaurant. ‘I have to work the next 14 days straight, 12-hour shifts. If you’re going to be horrible, you should just go home.’ ‘I can’t,’ I replied venomously. ‘Because you rushed me and now I don’t have my keys or my phone, so I can’t. I’m just going to stay here and be furious at you instead.’ At this point, my Father wandered over to see what we were talking about. ‘Nothing,’ My little sister replied sweetly, glaring at me. ‘Nothing at all,’ I repeated, turning to whisper to my sister, ‘I have not forgotten how cross I am with you. It’s just, as a grown-up, I’m putting it on ice. We’ll deal with this later.’
My little sister nodded in understanding. ‘On ice,’ I hissed as I followed her and my Father into the restaurant.
We were arguing furiously yet secretly because I wanted Italian, and my little sister wanted Indian. Being the more mature sibling (emotionally- age wise there’s very little in it), I tried to explain. ‘I really like Indian,’ I began graciously. ‘But I do not like sharing food with Dad.’ My little sister nodded in agreement. My Father has many excellent qualities. Sharing is not one of them. My Father shares precisely as Archimedes would- exactly.
‘I don’t want so much,’ You complain as he painstakingly distributes your allotted share. ‘And she doesn’t like tomatoes.’ Personal needs and desires are not taken into account by my Father, who shares food in a manner that would make Marx shiver in joy.
At the restaurant, we staged a mini-capitalist coup, and had a very pleasant evening, each of us carefully guarding our own little plot of individual food, whilst me and my little sister intermittently hissed at each other, ‘On ice.’ All in all, it was one of the more family-themed events of the last month- everyone zealously looking after their own needs, whilst half the table were engaged in a secret yet furious row. It seems like the long wait til next Christmas will fly by- though possibly not for my little sister, who seems to be working an extraordinary amount. (I will be sure to point this out to her- people really like that).
unfashionablylost 