Thursday, June 6, 2013

That One Time My Brother Really Bugged Me

It was the morning after Thanksgiving at my mom and dad's house. I was in college; my brother was in grad school. My Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Bradley (you can read about my relationship with him here) were visiting for the holiday, and we had just finished a leisurely breakfast when it happened. 

I had come downstairs that morning to find my brother, a notoriously early (and obnoxiously cheerful) riser, and my mom, who is much the same, in the kitchen already. My mom was frying sausage, my brother was sitting on the kitchen counter. When I entered the kitchen (my dad and I were the grumpy ones, although after I had kids I found out that I no longer could afford the luxury of being a crab in the morning), my mother told me she was going to make biscuits and gravy to go with the sausage.

Canned biscuits. Because she didn't want to mess with making them from scratch (or Bisquick, which is as scratchy as she got with biscuits).

(I interrupt this post to present a joke, ca. 1945, that my mother thought was a riot when she was a girl:

          Knock Knock
                Who's there?

          Bisquick.
               Bisquick who?

         Bisquick! Your pants are on fire!

Back to regularly scheduled post.)

I immediately started whining that I didn't want canned biscuits, and my brother joined in. My mom wasn't having any of it, until my brother said, "I'll make them. Do you have Bisquick?"

My mom pulled a box out of the pantry, saying, "It's kind of old. I don't use it very often," and my brother set to work. He produced a pan of beautiful, golden biscuits.

Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Bradley joined us, and we sat around the table, visiting, long after we had all finished eating.

There was one biscuit left on the plate, and as I listened to the conversation, I reached over and picked up the biscuit, cutting it in half across its equator. As I began to spread butter on half of the biscuit, something caught my eye. I looked closer....

A dead weevil was baked into my biscuit half.

I quickly placed the biscuit half, cut-side down, on my plate, then reached for the other half of the biscuit, which I crumbled into bits on my plate, looking for evidence of another weevil, but I didn't find anything. As everyone began leaving the table, I carried my plate into the kitchen, flipped over the biscuit half, and showed my mother the baked-in weevil.

She was horrified.

My brother came in the kitchen at that point, and my mother said, "Show him."

I proffered the biscuit half to him.

He gave it a glance and said, "Huh. Missed one."

Our mouths dropped open.

"I really wanted biscuits," my brother continued, "but when I opened the box, there were bugs inside. I sifted through all of it and fished them out, but I guess I missed one."


Shout out to Christine at
 A Fly On Our (ChickenCoop) Wall:
this drawing thing is HARD!
We never told Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Bradley about the weevils in the biscuits. We figured it was best that they never knew about it.

And I never eat anything that my brother bakes (and he's a pretty darn fine baker, I must admit) without it crossing my mind that he wouldn't hesitate to do the same thing again.

And probably has.

I figure it's best that I never know about it.






Linking to Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop. Prompt #3 Share a story about a sibling that still makes you smile.

Mama’s Losin’ It






21 comments:

  1. Good thing I didn't like biscuits before; I certainly wouldn't be able to eat them now.

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  2. Dyanne, it just goes to prove that all boys are gross. I would have made him eat the offending biscuit for that! Just think of all the extra protein you missed out on. M

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    1. I may have once picked a moth out of some rice that I served my husband, so I'm not sure I can really talk.

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  3. Blech! That's so gross! Who does that?! hahaha I think I probably would've told EVERYONE! I've definitely never wanted biscuits that bad. Maybe brownies...no. Still no.

    Thanks for reading my awkward story today :)

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    1. You're welcome! I'm still trying to get the vision of those crotchless panties out of my head.

      My brother won't use a hand towel more than once, so it's a little surprising that he actually did this heinous act.

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  4. 1. EW,EW,EW,EW,EW 2. I might expect that from a 7 year old, but he was in grad school!! For shame! 3. Are Bisquick biscuits really that good? 4. Now you know why my pigs look like elephants. :)

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    1. 1. I KNOW, RIGHT? 2. I KNOW, RIGHT? 3. They ARE pretty tasty. Certainly better than canned. 4. Without a doubt!

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  5. I've never picked out weevils, but I do cut the mold off cheese on the regular and eat "the good parts." Isn't cheese just tasty mold anyway???

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    1. Oh, I've totally done the cheese thing. I just don't tell my kids or they wouldn't eat it.

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  6. Just a little extra protein! ;) Such a boy thing to do!

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  7. I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth! EWWWWW!!!!

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    1. The very real possibility that that wasn't the only one he missed but was the only one FOUND has bothered me ever since.

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    1. I guess it would have been worse had it been alive and kicking.

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  9. When my BFF and I lived in an apartment together, we had a similar problem. It was close to 10 or 11 at night when she remembered she had to bake dessert for work.
    We found the weevils in the flour, and tried to sift them out. We figured a little protein wouldn't hurt... (But I didn't eat any of it.)

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    1. Yeah, I couldn't have knowingly done it either. Don't know what, exactly, that says about my brother.

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  10. Yikes! Weevil for breakfast! That reminds me of a time when a bunch of us in the family, besides guests, were picking cherries off my dad's cherry tree and filling our bellies. They were delicious until... someone, at the end of our eating fest, opened a cherry and discovered a small white worm. I was horrified! I had eaten a bunch of worms! I can't eat a cherry today without thinking of that. My hubs and I own an orchard... but we spray the cherries, thank goodness!

    Thanks for visiting my blog.

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    1. I did the same thing with some almonds I got at a fruit stand in California. Bleh! I'm sure they were harmless (to humans, anyway), but bleh!

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  11. Your brother didn't grow up in my family. I think you know our #1 family rule is " Don't eat bugs!" Come to think of it, though, I guess you are the one who broke the rule! :-)

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