117: You Gonna Eat That?
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Every night, when I was a kid, my family would sit down to dinners together. And every night, as best as I can remember, when the meal was done, my mom would take the ice from her glass, tip it back into her mouth, and chill on it. Loudly. And every night, all of us would ask her, "Please don't crunch the ice. Please never, ever, ever do that again." And every night, she would ignore this request. And in retrospect, I have to say, I got a hand it to my mom. She is not somebody to be pushed around. This is just who she is. She is willful. She gets her way. It's something to be admired. And of course, this story happened at the dinner table. The dinner table is the stage for so many family dramas. Today on our program, we bring you three stories about families at mealtime from W.B.E.C. Chicago in Public Radio International. It's this American life from our glass. Today's program, you're going to eat that. Three families, three stories, and three acts. Ek one, breakfast, a story of eating and not eating. And what you learn when you view the world through the prism of a single meal. Ek two, lunch. We hear a father's lament about sippy cups chewing with your mouth closed and why it is not good to apply tape to the cat. Ek three, dinner. We have a story from Dave Eggers about what family dinners are like when the parents are suddenly gone and the kids are left to run things themselves. Stay with us. Ek one, breakfast. In every family there are the family legends that everyone in the family repeats over and over. And then there are the stories that are suppressed, disappeared with a kind of Stalinist thronos. Next story falls more into that second camp than the first. They lay dormant for a long time before Annie Cheney decided to tell it here. It was produced by Jay Allison. This morning for breakfast I had a toasted everything bagel with eggs and cheese and a cup of Earl Grey tea with... A reporter where I used to work taught me to ask people what they had for breakfast at the beginning of an interview. I said it was a good way to set your reporting levels. In 1996 Seattle police officers faced a tense situation when they were called out. That's me on the radio in Seattle. I was a reporter for a public station. They didn't pay me or anything. I was just a volunteer but I was still a reporter. I had a microphone and a tape recorder and I went to press conferences. They flooded it with tear gas. I wasn't very good at it. I was in Stan being told what to say and I was too cowardly to figure out the truth for myself. I came out firing his gun and officers retaliated shooting him nine times. A lot of times the most revealing response I got from people was what they had for breakfast and it was the most interesting to me. I'm Annie Cheney for KUOW 94.9 public radio.
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