I was extremely lucky growing up in that my great-grandparents, rejecting the ways of their parents' home countries (God be thanked), refused to feed their children any food that could not easily be found at a local grocery store at that time (or grown on the unsuccessful family farm; I come from a long line of really crappy farmers). This has led to a real lack of food that frankly, would have scared me, since my Bavarian (okay, fine, I totally get a kick out of that part. Bavarian! In Bavaria! When--it, you know, existed as a country) ancestors were like, Bavarian peasants and ate really terrifying food. If they ate. Being, you know, peasants and whatnot. Could be why they left. Really don't know. Though there was a minister of some sort involved in the entire expedition.
Right, food, coming back to that.
Except saurkraut. That, and cabbage. Couldn't get away from it. Saurkraut, luckily, only came out with such accompanying dishes as macaroni salad, potato salad, and hot dogs (the traditional ancestral food of the gods). Which--I guess that's a food that is common amongst the German peasantry? But those two. And like, this range of Polish to Czech food things that, in some kind of show of middle European solidarity (I really have no idea here) would be dragged out, for years were considered the Traditional Ancestral Foods of My Family until we discovered a.) we had reached the age of majority and b.) no one in the family could work out the Traditional Ancestor who was that hot for Americanized bread pudding.
However, cabbage grew on me. Saurkraut, Polish sausage, anything with the word blood in it in any language, no, and that's after being forced to visit A Million Heritage Festivals (Texas hill country. There were festivals at the drop of a hat in order to Introduce Our Heritage of Not Hot Dogs, the bastards).
It's like this entry had a point, huh? Just wait.
So whilst in college one year, I had this professor I loved and who died, so we really won't linger over that part, but he had this argument that America had no culture, which even then I thought was bullshit but he would smoke with me, so what can you do? We talked about defining characteristics and cultural anthropology and you know, all the stuff liberal arts students talk about with their professors while sober. Now, about ten year later, I finally want to tell him I found my defining characteristic of at least my family's culture, and it is gravy.
This came to me when I realized:
a.) not everyone could match gravy type to meat at a glance and a taste.
b.) some people don't have a gravy for everything. And I mean. Everything.
c.) some people make cream sauce and call it gravy (my soul hurts)
d.) some people do not like gravy and in fact, really cannot comprehend them
I once dated a guy who did not like tea, coffee, or gravy. I should have known we were doomed. He also watched a lot of japanimation and refused to buy a new bed no matter how much it squeaked, which is beside the point but weirdly funny right now.
And the query I was running just ended. Sample of the latest tests sent to us to write:
PSRjd 4028: DT8000_080 FOR EDG 100084969 AND TRACE ID 184231617
Dear Programmer Person,
Please tell me you thought this was funny.
--jenn
(Yes, I do know what it is, but that is because my mother wrote the error code. Otherwise, I would still be at the colon going "eh"?)