Justin Halpern: Sh*t My Dad Says

“It’s got peas in it,” I replied.

“So pick out the peas.”

“Well, you know I don’t like peas, but you put peas in it anyway. Why do you do that?” I whined.

“Excuse me? You’re treading on thin fucking ice, buddy,” my dad barked, looking up from his plate. “That’s your mother. You and she are not equals. Here’s her,” he said, putting his hand high up above his head, “and here’s you,” he added, putting his other hand well below the table. “If she wants to serve only peas for the rest of fucking eternity you will sit there every goddamned day and eat them and say ‘thank you’ and ask for more.”

“Why would I ask for more if I hate them?” I said.

My dad told me to leave the table and go to my room—or at least that’s what I think he said, because he was screaming with a mouth full of peas. About a week later, my mom came home from her law school library a little later than usual to find my brother Evan and me sitting on the couch watching TV a few feet from our dad, who was leaning back in his recliner, half-asleep. She turned off the TV, rousing my dad, and told the three of us that she had an announcement.

“We’re going to eat what impoverished families eat,” she proclaimed.

“What does ‘impoverished’ mean?” I whispered to Evan.

“It means poor people or something,” he said, worry lines spreading over his face like a spiderweb.

Our mom went on to explain that she had visited the grocery store where some of the poor families she knew through her volunteering shopped with their food stamps. She described the food, how only some of it was expired though all of it looked disgusting, and then capped off her anecdote with, “We’re going to eat for a week only the food I purchase from that store, with the same budget as they do.”

“Dad?” I said, turning to him in desperation.

“Dad thinks this is a great idea,” my mom replied, before he could answer.

A couple days later our fridge and cupboards were stocked with the strangest-looking foods I’d ever seen. I remember thinking to myself, Poor people eat a lot of stuff in cans . Many of the cans’ labels listed some kind of meat, and underneath the name of the meat, “in water.” Ham in water, chicken in water, cubed beef in water. The bread came in a white plastic bag on which there were only four words: WHITE BREAD FRESH BAKED.

“How is this fresh baked?” I asked Evan, holding a limp, floury slice in my hand.

“I don’t know. I guess at one point, someone baked it, and then it was fresh.”

At lunchtime on the first day of our new food regime, I opened up the brown paper bag my mom had packed for me. The first item I pulled out was a foul combination of foodstuffs posing as a turkey sandwich. I held it up in front of me. The bread looked like two pieces of soggy sandpaper, and the turkey looked like it was made out of whatever Larry King is made out of: some kind of pasty white, stringy flesh.

“That looks fucking nasty,” my friend Aaron said, staring at my sandwich like it was a mangled creature that had washed ashore after a tsunami.

That afternoon I came home and marched right into Evan’s room. I asked him if his lunch bag was filled with the same inedible stuff as mine. It was. We each had thrown out our sandwich and the strange, carrotlike vegetables that came with it, and eaten only the block of white American cheese that completed the so-called meal. I wanted to revolt, but Evan has never been the revolutionary type, and I wasn’t prepared to stage a unilateral rebellion. The only hope I had was that my dad was feeling similarly disgusted and would put an end to this madness.

A few hours later, while we boys were hanging out in the living room before dinner, my mom presented us with that evening’s menu. “Turkey soup,” she announced, wearing an apron and holding a large spoon, as strange smells emanated from the kitchen behind her.

I looked at my dad, who kept his eyes on the evening news, unfazed. I was nervous about my physical ability to consume the meal my mom was about to serve, and as I usually do when I’m nervous, I voiced a positive thought in an effort to will the best possible outcome.

“I like turkey, right?” I said.

My dad continued to stare at the television. “Are you asking me, or are you telling me?” he said without so much as glancing my way.

“I’m telling you, I like turkey.”

“Okay,” he said, pausing for a moment before adding, “What the fuck does that mean for me?”

I could tell he was in a bad mood, so I ended the conversation. Voicing my affinity for turkey had helped, and I felt more confident about being able to eat the soup.

A few minutes later, we sat down to dinner and my mom filled all of our bowls with a brown, chunky liquid that resembled what I imagine a grizzly bear’s diarrhea looks like. There were white chunks in it as well as red chunks, and it was the consistency of a watery bowl of oatmeal. All of us looked at one another, even my mom. I stuck my spoon in the bowl and was careful to maneuver around the chunks and ladle up only liquid. I brought it to my lips slowly and purposefully, as if I were a spy ingesting a suicide pellet. Then I took a sip. And spit it out.

“Jesus H. Christ, we’re trying to have a meal here, goddamn it,” my dad shouted, dropping his spoon on the table.

“I can’t eat this! I tried!” I said, as Evan laughed.

“You didn’t try,” my mom replied.

“I did! I can’t eat it! It’s too gross!”

“This is how poor kids eat. This is the point of us eating like this, to understand what people less fortunate than us go through,” my mom responded.

“I understand! I just want to eat something else now!” I said as my eyes welled with tears.

“Everybody just be quiet. Let’s just shut the fuck up and eat,” my dad said.

Then he put a spoonful of soup in his mouth.

“Jesus Christ. This is god-awful. I can’t eat this,” he said after swallowing it.

“See!” I exclaimed.

“No, you two are eating this,” he said, looking at me and Evan. “I’m not.”

“WHAT?!?!” I shouted.

I got up, stormed out of the dining room, ran into my room, and slammed the door. I assumed that within a few seconds, my mom would open the door, say something that would make me feel better, and invite me back to the table for a proper dinner, like spaghetti with meatballs or chicken and potatoes. In the meantime, maybe she’d even drive to Jack in the Box and buy me a spicy crispy chicken sandwich, my favorite, to make up for this unjust and traumatic culinary experiment.

Ten minutes went by, and no one knocked on my door. I made a pact with myself to not leave my room until someone came for me. Another ten minutes went by, then an hour, then three hours, and suddenly it was ten o’clock, my bedtime. I turned the light out and crawled into bed, fuming and hungry. Then suddenly my door opened.

“Hey, Mom,” I said, trying to sound angry and assuming it was her tucking me in as she did every night.

“Nah, it’s me,” said my dad, his large, shadowy figure approaching me, lit only by the light from the hallway behind him.

“Oh. Hi,” I replied coldly.

He sat down on the bed and laid his hand on my shoulder.

“You’re a pain in the ass, but I love you,” he said, then laughed to himself.

I didn’t respond.

“I know you’re pissed off. I even understand why you’re pissed off.”

“No, you don’t,” I said confidently.

“Oh please, you’re ten. I think I understand a goddamned ten-year-old.”

Our conversation was not making me less upset, and he could tell. The tone of his voice softened.

“I know you think if you’re eating that shit, I should have to eat it. And then I said I wasn’t going to and you had to, and now you’re pissed off, yeah?”