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Laws Concerning Food and Drink, by Ian Frazier Household Principles; Lamentations of the Father – The Atlantic (February 1997)
If you’ve read Ian Frazier in The New Yorker or elsewhere, you’ll know he has a real ability to satirize situations in a unique manner. If you’ve ever fantasized that you should be the Moses, King Solomon, or maybe King David, you’ll enjoy the longer piece the following extract comes from in the Atlantic. I read it to my kids and my five year-old enjoyed my solemn and Sunday school-like reading, but my nine year-old understood all the thinly veiled references to admonishments parents make every day and we had a good chuckle together about it.
On Screaming
Do not scream; for it is as if you scream all the time. If you are given a plate on which two foods you do not wish to touch each other are touching each other, your voice rises up even to the ceiling, while you point to the offense with the finger of your right hand; but I say to you, scream not, only remonstrate gently with the server, that the server may correct the fault. Likewise if you receive a portion of fish from which every piece of herbal seasoning has not been scraped off, and the herbal seasoning is loathsome to you, and steeped in vileness, again I say, refrain from screaming. Though the vileness overwhelm you, and cause you a faint unto death, make not that sound from within your throat, neither cover your face, nor press your fingers to your nose. For even now I have made the fish as it should be; behold, I eat of it myself, yet do not die.
