Dinner Conversation

Yesterday morning I'm sitting at the breakfast table with Mark, and we are talking about crap. One of the cable news programs is on, and I am answering Mark's comment about something or other that he just heard.

"Well Mark, I think....blah, blah, blah....."

I go on like this for a little bit, and then I look up from my plate of waffles and bacon. Mark is gone, vanished. Sonofabitch, he did it to me again. The only question is how long was I talking before he disappeared? You see the fact is, with my poor vision, if I am looking down at my plate I cannot see anything else which gives Mark a chance to sneak away.

Everybody who has a wife, husband, boyfriend, gay paramour, knows that there are little pet peeves that just drive you crazy. There are at least a dozen gripes I have about Mark, but this is about his getting up from the breakfast, lunch, dinner table, without so much as a belch. When we first got together I would think he was getting up to fetch something from the kitchen, and I would sit there at the table quietly waiting. After five, ten, or more minutes I would go looking for him only to find him watching television in the bedroom, or playing solitaire on the computer.

"Are you coming back to the table?"

"No, I'm done."

What makes it hard to determine if he is done or not, is the fact that Mark eats like a sparrow. He eats about three mouthfuls of food, rearranges the food on his plate to make it look like he sampled it all, and he's done.

I grew up in a house where you asked permission to leave the table. Now I don’t expect Mark to ask permission, but it would be nice if he said something like, “Alan, your conversation is quite scintillating, but it is interfering with my watching The Real Housewives of New Jersey, so I will be leaving the table now.”

Instead he just leaves me there, all alone with the waffles I made from scratch, talking to myself about crap.