parental "help"

...i am currently convinced that my parents are attempting, in every way humanly possible, to help me become the next David Sedaris or Sarah Vowell.

why do i think this?

well, it's been escalating all through the Thanksgiving holiday, but today it reached ludicrous proportions. they got into a screaming argument today. which ended in a few hurt eardrums, and my stepfather retiring to the living room and promising to not speak to my mother again.

what was it over?

the crucial and life-shattering task of refilling the olive oil bottle.

i couldn't have dreamed of a better setup, really. my mother had decided, the day before, that we should go to the Corning Museum of Glass to see a special exhibit. My stepfather had declined to join us because his back was bothering him, and instead he stayed home to exchange the screen door with the storm door. when we arrived home we brought her christmas purchases in (all 3 bags of them, despite the "no chatchkes this year!" rule), and started cooking dinner. my stepfather asked for things to do while we cooked, and my mother asked him to spray the baking dishes with the non-stick cooking spray. after that, he stood idle waiting for another task, while my mother and i argued, in detail, over how to prepare the cauliflower. "i have to core it," she said, paring knife in hand, ready to discard my favorite part of the plant into the compost bin. "some people like to eat the core," i replied. after the resultant hair-pulling, she agreed to let me place the core pieces in another dish so i could eat them, which i promptly did. she proceeded to season and garnish the fish, at which point my stepfather asked, once again, for something he could do.

my mother had nothing.

i, on the other hand, had just dressed the cut-up cauliflower with the last of the olive oil in the convenient dispenser bottle they keep over the stove. "oh, yes, you could refill this for me," i asked him.

little did i know i was starting the next world war. the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand had nothing on me. the subsequent "no, oh God!" from my mother gave my stepfather just the right boost of self-esteem he needed to succeed at this ever-so-onerous task.

the first mistake he made, in my mother's eyes, was to look at the metal can of soy sauce to see if it was olive oil. in my mind, that's fairly logical - i've seen plenty of square cans of olive oil at the store. my mother was not so forgiving. "oh god, he's looking at the SOY SAUCE," she said to me in that parental tone that brooks no contradiction. then it was which bottle of olive oil would he choose? the tension was extraordinary, but i had no idea that my mother had a vested interest in the end result. the volume at which she screeched to get my stepfather to choose the *correct bottle* was near-horror-movie-esque. Karen Black would have been terribly proud of her. hell, Brian De Palma would have been proud of her. the folks at Twisted Pictures would have referred her to their sound designers. it was a five-star screech, and it scared me, the dog, and the cat entirely out of the kitchen. it wasn't until i reached for the nearest wine glass and she said "that one is mine" that i realized the extent of her supreme power. my wine glass was on the other side of the kitchen. i still don't understand how i ended up 20 feet away from my glass. that said, it was her wine glass. hers had ice. mine didn't. i suppose having powers like Screaming Mimi leaves a soul a bit.... disoriented.

my stepfather placed the bottle on the butcher block and walked out. "i'm not doing it," he said. "you two can talk amongst yourselves." "are you not talking to us anymore?" my mother asked. "it's just you i'm not talking to," my stepfather replied. i dashed into the living room. "you're not making it easier on yourself," i whispered frantically. my mother, from the kitchen, shouted "that's fine! you can ask her for anything you might want!" "oh no," i answered. "i am not doing the divorced child dance while you two are still in this house!" as i went back into the kitchen, she asked me "are you sucking up to him?" "oh sure," i replied, "if i'm talking to you when you're annoyed it's called helping, but him it's sucking up?"

*sigh*

it was at that moment i realized that i was going to have to write about their relationship come hell or high water, if they had anything to say about it. suffice it to say, once that display was finished, my mother and i finished cooking dinner while my stepfather watched a movie, then my mother, in her exaggerated angry tone, told my stepfather that dinner was "ready should he want anything."

half an hour later we ended up crying over West Side Story together, snuggling on the living room couch in reminiscence, with many compliments over the cauliflower, might i add. despite the silliness of our arguments, we do love each other. and their effort to become the next model for funny family commentary is kind of sweet in its own way. or at least, it would be if i wasn't involved at ground zero. i might refuse, in petty fashion, to let their effigies be a spoken-word project on NPR like they might have dreamed of, but they had every intention of making themselves famous via me. at this point, i am far too terrified of what will happen come Christmas to refuse.