Much Is Said In Jest

It was pitch dark this morning when my son began screaming at his younger brother for stealing the olives off of his plate with such an intensity that you’d think the olives were the last memento from an old lover who’d just died.

Why was he eating olives for breakfast?

Funny that you ask. My 10-year-old daughter decided she was going to eat olives together with her omelet and knäckebröd. Where I come from, we called this type of crispbread Wasa bread, which is actually a brand.

Swedish language alert: Knäck means to snap or crack. So, knäckebröd is bröd, or bread, that cracks. (The son of a friend of mine used to call knäckebröd kick a bird:-)

At 7:25 this morning, my daughter was jamming her arm elbow deep inside of a black olive jar when her younger brothers looked over. This was interesting, they must have thought. We don’t usually see olives at this time of the day.

They wanted some olives too. With a cup of coffee in my hand trying to break out of my Nyquil-induced trance from the night before, I swayed on the other side of the bar and watched with fear to see what would happen.

My daughter reluctantly began to share the olives. But at some point, the middle child felt slighted by his share of olive handouts and began to protest, loudly.

At that point, I could have used an olive branch, but the juice had already spilled.

Photo: Alpha from Flickr