Learning Your A, B, C's

Do you remember this stuff? I don't know if they make it still. Though, any of this stuff tasted exactly the same as any other Chef Boyardee, pasty tomato juice with a pasta that was reminiscient of wall paper glue. Though as a kid, I liked it as it was just junk food.

My Mom liked it too for the reason that it was easy to make. There's no skill required except opening the can, glopping it into the pan and heating it. Add to that a couple of pieces of buttered bread and there's lunch!

For those of us that had this Alphabet soup, we all tried to maneuver the pasta into words, mostly trying to spell our names out. After a bit, my brother had a different idea.

With my Mom's backed turned, he pushed his bowl near me and floating in the red sauce was the word, “Fuck.”

I busted out laughing and my Mom never did turn around. Kids laugh and make noise anyways.

He then worked on the dish a bit further and showed his next word: “Asshole”

I laughed again but this time my Mom turned around. But by then my brother had put his bowl back in front of him before she noticed.

He then became more concerted. It took a while but then he showed me the next obscenity, “Pussy Fart.”

I laughed but didn't get it. At eight, what do you know of these things?

My brother made a huge mistake though. He didn't scramble the letters up but left to go to the bathroom, probably confident my Mom would continue with the clean up by the sink. I was too focused on eating the glop when she left the sink to go to the kitchen closet.

She did a double take at his bowl and then shouted out...

“KENNETH!!!!!”

That jolted me out of my daze and I looked up. I then acted as surprised as she was.

He comes back and she looks at him, then the bowl and back to him.

His best answer was that it “formed that way on it's own.”

My Mom was never an astrophysicist or mathematician but she said something like: “Oh sure! Those letters just formed themselves like that! It would take million monkeys a million years to accidentally put those letters together like that!!”

Of course, my brother had no response.

The bowl, bread and milk all soon went down the drain or into the garbage.

“I think you can do w/o lunch...don't you?” my Mom sarcastically said.

I sat there, sort of secretly enjoying this spectacle. For once it wasn't me that was in trouble.