Thursday, July 2, 2009

Please pass the wiener....schnitzel


WHAT NOW?

The conversations around our dinner table can be very entertaining for me and my lovely wife. Especially when the two individuals providing the bulk of that entertainment (our two girls) are on their "A" game. Last night we had a little BBQ going. I'm talking hot dogs, potato salad, fries, the works! With a meal like this there actually isn't much talking, just eating. The peace wouldn't last however when I uttered these, now famous in our house, words. "Can someone please pass me the wieners?" I know it's kind of an old fashioned term for hot dogs, but sometimes I like to go old school with my vocabulary. Well, the looks I got from both of my girls reminded me that while my comment may have been innocent enough, the term wiener has a whole different meaning in the world of grade schoolers. My oldest, after trying to wrap her brain around the fact that Dad just announced the word WIENER at the dinner table said "Dad, that's gross!" My youngest then breaks into what I assume is laughter, but is mostly snickers and heavy breathing. My wife, always trying to keep our girls away from such thoughts, starts in with "well you know, that is what some people call hot dogs." Then, out of know where comes the somewhat accurate history lesson. "In Germany" she continues..."they make hot dogs called wiener schnitzels and that is where the term wiener actually comes from." Thank you professor, but at this point we have used the term wiener so much that it wouldn't matter how we tried to justify it, all our girls heard was WIENER, WIENER WIENER...BLAH, BLAH, BLAH...WIENER. Now our oldest has joined the barley breathing laugh parade. My wife tries to close the matter by saying "so do you understand the difference between hot dog wieners and the other kind?" To which my daughter replies "ya, but I don't want to eat any wiener because they might have hair on them!" "OK, can someone pass me the hot dogs so I can eat now???"

PEACE OUT DADS!!!

1 comment:

  1. As a mom to two (smaller) girls and wife to a stay at home dad, this made me laugh out loud. OH, the things I can look forward to...

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