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Show Dinner time isn't fun anymore By MARCELLA WALKER On the way to work this morning I heard on the radio that a survey had shown that Americans are eating fewer and fewer meals together as a family. They claim that this is because more and more women are working outside of the home and that may be a contributing cause but the easy access to fast food joints hasn't helped the cause a lot. If anyone would have asked me in the survey, I could have confirmed that fewer families are eating meals together, at least that is the way it is at our house. I only work parttime so I am home more often than I am not. I can work all day on a meal and have no more people at the table than if I open a can of soup. It has been so long since we have the entire family sit down at the kitchen table to eat a meal together that I cannot even remember when it was. Even when everyone is at home it is still. hopeless. The girls just had a hamburger at four o'clock with friends and they are not hungry yet. The son takes a look and decides he will go to McDonalds. Dad hauls his plate into the family room to watch the news on TV. Do you know how lonely it is to sit at the table by yourself to eat a meal? I stargaze out the window, re-focus re-focus and notice the dirty windows. I chew slowly and study the pattern on the table formica. I finally throw in the towel, take my plate into the p.g. blab : . , z family room, too, or chuck the food down the disposal. Dinner time is not fun anymore. When the children were small we would use dinner time as a forum, . $e could have a, family, meeting we ebuld find out what everyone " did that day that was fun and the entire conversation would ofttimes deteriorate into an argument that meant someone left the table in a huff. No one ever asks permission to leave the table except company. I tried hard to teach the kids a few manners. I tried to teach them to excuse themselves when they left the table. I tried to teach them to not burp and to cover their mouth when they coughed. None of the teaching ever took, though. I am always startled when the mothers of my children's friends tell me how well mannered my kids are. I look around and ask if they are sure they are talking about MY kids? I may have more pet peeves about dinner time than anything else. For one thing, it takes an act of congress to get anyone to come after I yell that soups on. Prior to this I had to threaten several souls just to get the table set. We used to have a policy that everyone took their own dirty dishes to the dishwasher and put them in. That worked good for a long time but it never happens anymore. Part of the reason is because the table setter hasn't unloaded the dishwasher yet, which is part of the job. Meals are not "down home" anymore. If I ask for suggestions for dinner I usually get none at all or a lot of "I don't knows." Once in a "while I get a wish for pizza, lasagna, or tacos. Nothing else, though. , . Some of the folks at our house will not eat anything that does not look like it could have come from a fast food outlet. They would like to eat out every meal and let us know that. When they were little they were satisfied with a popsicle in the afternoon af-ternoon or a peanut butter sandwich after school. Now it is a daily plea for a trip to Subway sandwiches or a call to the pizza place. It used to be that I could not keep enough bread in the house. Now I have to figure out ways of using before it turns hard. They cannot eat what is on hand and they cannot eat at home more than once a day. What is wrong here? Fortunately, Dad eats anything I put before him. He never has an; ideas on what I should fix for dinner but he will always eat it whatever it is. He is the only one who doesn't suggest we go out to eat each day. Other than lettuce, I don't thini my son eats a vegetable. I never see him dish up any on the few occasions when he eats with us. He buys his own food supply. He eats a daily ration of nachos, Hostess pie, ami pop. He does take a sandwich with lettuce on it to work. Nachos are his mainstay and kt makes it at least once a day and sometimes oftener. While he was on his missions) wrote and told us he had learned In eat vegetables, including tomate When I accused him the other dayof not eating a tomato now, he said indignantly that he certainly die . eat tomatoes, just not when , around to see it ; The nutritionists keep telling us tt feed our family a balanced diet, Itfc of vegies and little meat. They must not have a family at home, is alii can say. When a dietician told us that ta is a lot of nutrition in pizza I just sighed a big sigh of relief. Thank goodness something was good Ik them that they will eat. Now if I could just get them to ei: it at the table. |