'Mess' Manners

Miss Manners surely would frown on my ilk since generally I distrust fussy formal place settings loaded down with highbrow habiliments populating my placemat. For that matter why must all of my eating effects be confined to a runty rectangle of colored fabric under my dishes, where even the saliva-salver gets a cheery charger plate of its own? If I have a table full of prime real ‘eat-state’ I’m going to cover it ALL with stew, goo, and a napkin or two, to collect the spew before it reflects off my face and back on to you.

What can I possibly do with a shorty fork that I cannot do brilliantly better with a much longer one? In fact I think most of my gut-plugging can be done with just a long tong and a ‘tick-pick’, so I can finally poke those pesky bottle-upped bottom olives, and absolve tooth-bound stringy asparagus from lingering longingly in a mirror and staring back at us. I savor soups with stars too so the big dipper comes in quite handy, but given that dessert is decidedly more dandy, I think it is doubtlessly dumb to sing a smaller spoon-tune before I consume soon.

For most folks it is customary to wear a bib when buttering up boatloads of lobster, but my wife insists that I always don a full length tarp, regardless if I’m pawing haughty claws or plowing down towny-chow. She reasons that a raincoat’s hot pockets awash in a comingling collection of cleaved-off  crunchy calories, beats any day where floor-freed peas plastered to her pads will turn her a shade of ‘green’, far closer to that of the Hulk than anything akin to envy. I of course am usually too dizzy to notice my wife’s pasty pedi-plight since hairy hungry hippos can’t help getting lost following crumb trails, especially while circumnavigating their favorite dining room high-chair. 

Hey I’m sorry that I’m not laced with grace nor a fan of that handsome n’ tanned ideal man who is part of the shiny silverware-savvy snob-set. Oh sure I maize still be a little WET-Nap behind the ears but that’s normal when bobbing for cobs and my lug of a mug is routinely covered in slop-trough gobs. Yeah I may not have mainstay manners yet, but at least when I slurp a drinkie I still park my pinkie high in the sky and I’m pointedly polite . . . since I never ever burp - unless spoken to first.