Creamed Corn

I had this beautifully moving and extremely cathartic post going last night which, of course, I was just writing and writing and writing, moved by a song that brings me to tears every single time I hear it, when my mouse froze, my screen went dark, and another screen - a blue one this time, popped up and told me that my computer was about to start to auto-dump its contents. Well, LargeBoy streamed into the room, unplugged, yanked the battery and stopped that process from happening - THANK GOD! Unfortunately, though, I hadn't thought to save the post as a draft while I was composing through the tear drops (ok, streams). Yup. How 'bout that for a big ol' dose of Post-Be-Gone. I'll post that post another time, it's sad, but sweet. So instead of yesterday being a two-post day, it was just the one. Today, however, I'm going to post about something funny.

Word of the day - Creamed Corn. My niece, Princess, despises creamed corn. To her, it is the AntiChrist. For me, it is a happy comfort food memory, I ate it all the time with my grandparents. My grandfather always thought it funny to challenge us to eat it with a fork (where's the fun in that?). Princess would rather bleed from her eyeballs than to look at, breathe near, hear or utter the words "creamed corn". This, in our family, means large quantities of ribbing and an endless supply of jokes and pranks that could, very likely, carry over through the holidays in many very evil ways. Yes, we are evil when it comes to practical jokes, we all have very wicked senses of humor. Mainly we focus on each other, but every once in a while, one of the kids gets brought into the loop - because, well, it's his or her turn in the rotation, as we like to say.

ET plays this game with her, taken from the esteemed Pee Wee's Playhouse (long before that meant a dark movie theater). He'll establish a word of the day and every time one of them uses it, the do something goofy. The favorite word, so far, has been "armpit", which is usually said while smothering the other in said armpit (UGH). Now, I'm not certain as to how creamed corn came up, probably while ET was planning a meal, but Princess voiced her complete and total disgust at the idea. She was quite insistent that creamed corn was gross, sickening, and Blehechkbluhr (how does one spell the sound of wretching?), and went streaking from the room letting out a scream. You have to know our Princess to know that the scream is almost always accompanied by hysterical laughter, rolled eyeballs, and some other comic facial expression, completed by the wild waving of the arms over the head. As she ran, she left the door to PrankLand wide open.

ET's first prank was to buy a multitude of cans of creamed corn and line the cupboard shelves with them, hiding the rest of the contents. He called Princess into the room, casually, and asked her about what they should make for their meal together. You can imagine the shock when she opened the cupboard to all of the cans staring at her, taunting her. Again with the screaming out of the room, followed by the maniacal laughter of her father. From then on, the more common "armpit" word of the day, frequently was replaced with "creamed corn," evoking similar responses. Keep in mind, of course, this is all in good fun, and Princess plays along with us (perhaps humoring US).

Last week, and over the weekend, ET spent quite a bit of time at our house helping us with the many many Herculean tasks that needed to be completed in order to host the giganto family party. As he retold the creamed corn story, flashes of light appeared, on a regular basis, over PC's an my heads, and then again over ET's. We decided that, indeed, we would drag this out until Christmas. The only catch is that we have to let it die down enough that she begins to forget about it...and then bring it up again before it's a "been there/done that" kind of a thing. Ideas, ideas, ideas: for the Thanksgiving feast, let everyone else be served whatever the vegetable dish may be....give her creamed corn (we'll all eat it when she won't, don't worry, no waste involved), stuffing of her stocking with creamed corn, complete with a note from Santa saying that he understood her deep affection for this delicious dish and wanted to make sure she had a nice supply of it, wrapping her Christmas gift from PC & me in a smaller package, but then giving her a nice big heavy box all wrapped beautifully, with a big red bow - only for her to discover when she opens it, that it's ....yep, you guessed it...creamed corn!

Oh yes, you're right. We certainly are awful, but the fun thing about Princess is that she'll TOTALLY play along, and quietly plot and plan about how to retaliate. All of this, and she's only "7, duh!" Yes, yes, we're grooming her well. Heh heh heh heh.....