Joe Cillo

THE CLEAN PLATE CLUB

Life is uncertain;
Eat dessert first.
Ernestine Ulmer

Peter Svacha was halfway through eating his chocolate pudding, when the restaurant where he was eating told him it was closing time.  He was furious.  He left the place, got a chain saw, sliced a hole in the establishment’s door and crawled back to the table to finish his pudding.

I know exactly how he felt.  I too would obliterate anything that kept me from finishing my dessert.  I blame this determination on my mother.

My mother’s forte was creating yummy desserts.  She had one number that she always served after spaghetti dinner that was amazingly beautiful and absolutely luscious.  She would bake an angel food cake from scratch (my mother would have sooner danced nude on a fire hydrant than use a cake mix).  The finished product was so light she needed to weight it down to stay on the plate.  She whipped up a custard of eggs, milk, vanilla, sugar and pineapple juice and frosted her cake with it.  She decorated the entire production with pineapple slices, maraschino cherries and strawberries and served it with a lots of whipped cream and a flourish.

BUT there was a catch.  My mother never allowed us to touch dessert until we cleaned up everything she put on our dinner plates. Before we could tuck into her pineapple delight, we had to demolish spaghetti with meatballs, broccoli in a cheese sauce, a green salad and garlic bread. We suffered for that cake.  Indeed we suffered. We endured tummy aches, stomach spasms and guilt…but we managed to down it  and when we did, we finished it down to the last bit of pineapple.

My mother’s chocolate cake was the eighth wonder of the world.  It was made with six eggs, a ton of butter and enough chocolate to keep a candy store supplied for ten years. She topped it with a mint chocolate frosting to die for and set it in the middle of the dining room table so we could see what we had to look forward to at the end of the meal.

But first, we had to finish dinner. Remember?   She would serve us a huge slab of steak, potatoes with cheddar cheese, asparagus hollandaise, a tossed salad and wait until we cleaned our plates before we could touch that cake. I still feel the pain of forcing that cake into my packed middle but I know that even if my stomach burst, I would let absolutely nothing interfere with my demolishing that wonderfully melt in your mouth cake.

All I can say, is “go for it Peter Svacha. “ Finish that pudding and never count the cost.  For what is dinner without a sweet finish?? It is nothing more than duty with no reward, a rose with no fragrance, sex without climax. Life is to be lived, of course, but if it is to be savored, we must have dessert.

Joe Cillo

www.forallevents.com/

BE GOOD TO YOUR PARENTS….OR ELSE!

Appreciating your parents is the only hope for civilization.
The Chinese Government & Lynn Ruth

China has decided it is a punishable crime for adult children to neglect their parents and I think that is a very wise decision. Wouldn’t it be wonderful for us all, if every nation followed suit?

It is about time someone took steps to stop the shameless way grown progeny are treating their parents these days. Elderly parents sit at home in their wheel chairs or on the sofa, counting the moments ‘til one of their offspring remembers that they are too weak and tired to get to Tesco’s; the hours tick by, their tummies gurgle, their heads ache and they stare at the door, praying it will open and the heir to their estate will appear bearing bubble and squeak and even a bit of pudding.

After all, parents have every right to expect their children to be there for them. Didn’t they clean up Junior when he got a bloody nose?  Didn’t they give their little princess dancing lessons so she could express her inner feelings? They let her get that disgusting tattoo of Frankenstein chewing a bunny and they never said a word when she appeared at the breakfast table, her hair dyed purple and three rings in her nose.

And that was before they became teen-agers.

They looked the other way, when their little darlings sold pot to the neighborhood grade-school kids, and the countless times they threw up on the couch from an overdose or got too affectionate with one another.  Remember that?

Didn’t they sacrifice that extra cruise, and the trip to see penguins copulate on an iceberg just so their son could go to university and their daughter could afford that abortion?  Of course they did.

And that is why the Chinese Government decided to step up to the plate and remind us that we owe Mummy and Daddy big time.  They were the ones who kept us alive through the bullying, the bike accidents, the shattered limbs and broken hearts.  Now, it is the children’s turn to keep their parents comfy and warm ‘til they breathe their last.  After all, there is always time to change the will, if they feel unloved.

Not that it will be easy if the law becomes universal. Take Mary Louise:  There she is galloping though her day, getting the kids to school, packing their lunches, rushing off to the office, picking up her darlings, and taking them to tap dancing and soccer, driving home, giving the house a quick dust, fixing dinner, greeting the father of her gang with a drink, serving food, cleaning the kitchen and collapsing in front of the telly.  At midnight, she and her hubby stagger up to bed, too exhausted to do what they used to do before they tied the knot. Suddenly, she sits bolt upright, snaps her fingers and says, “OH MY GOD!!!  I forgot to visit Daddy.  Now, we’ll never pay off this mortgage.”

And if her partner is a good sort, he says, “Don’t worry darling. I will visit you every Tuesday and bring chocolate.”

Joe Cillo

www.forallevents.com/