Quicheable Moments

As parents, it is our responsibility to teach our children to be good people, to treat others with respect, and to try to make the world a better place. We must teach our children to respect themselves and to respect their bodies, because they are only given one. For those of us with sons, this obviously means that we must teach them that, under no circumstance, is it okay to eat quiche.

Everyone's heard the phrase, based on a book published in the early eighties, that "real men don't eat quiche." I first heard this as a young boy while watching a sitcom. I was young and impressionable and left alone to turn the dial to any of the four TV channels that we had. I don't know what the show was about, all I remember was hearing the phrase. Like any young boy, I wanted to grow up to be a man. A real man. So I made a solemn promise that I would never eat quiche.

I know that there are plenty of "real men" who eat quiche. Unfortunately, I don't have any data to support that hypothesis, so I'm probably wrong. But like Samson couldn't cut his hair, I couldn't eat quiche. Except that, unlike Samson and his hair, with me, there was no divine commandment involved, unless you argue that television replaced God and, therefore, the commandment was divine. But if television replaced God as god, then television's divinity was replaced by my Atari 2600, which was then replaced by my Commodore 64, which was eventually replaced by my 1972 baby blue Toyota pickup, which was replaced by a string of Mazda RX7s, which were eventually replaced by my first "modern" computer pre-loaded with Windows 95, which was replaced by a series of other computers, cell phones, smartphones, and Louisiana Hot Sauce, which makes everything taste better. Except for ice cream. This is what you get for following logic to its logical conclusion. So you should stop arguing that television replaced God or you'll go to hell, according to this new app on my smartphone.

Back to the point about how I differ from Samson, if at all. Well, for one, I have not killed a lion with my bare hands. But I bet I could. If the lion was weak and had no teeth and was dead and I had a sharp knife and maybe a gun. Also, I'm not sure that I've dated anyone named Delilah. I think I would have remembered that. But the 90s were a crazy time, a time when Kevin Costner was, against all odds and despite a stunning lack of acting ability, a movie star. It was also a time when I decided to wear my hair a little shorter, a decision I've lived with ever since. With so much going on in the 90s, I can't really say whether I've ever dated anyone named Delilah. Nor am I entirely sure whether I dated anyone at all in the 90s. What exactly did I do during that decade? I may have hit the snooze button for a good ten years.

Oh, you want to hear some quiche war stories? Well, as you may have suspected, there have been a couple of close calls with my vow of quiche-abstinence. Let me tell you about the first time I nearly lost my soul to quiche.

I was on a first date with a girl I'd met in college. Naturally, I wanted to impress her, so I took her to a fancy restaurant. I clearly remember standing in the buffet line, eyeballing some exotic food that I'd never seen before. I'm an adventurous fellow, as long as there's no danger involved, so I put a heaping helping of huevos on my plate and returned to our table.

I'll never forget sitting across from my date and looking deeply into her eyes. I had to stare deeply into her eyes because, if I didn't, my eyes would be drawn upward to the large pimple in the middle of her forehead. It was an eye-magnet, that pimple. Little did I know that I'd soon forget all about that pustule of purulent material.

I forked a large bite of mystery food into my mouth. That was when she purred, "I didn't know they had quiche."

I stopped chewing. Through a mouthful of egg, I asked her the obvious question: "Did you just purr?" But then the words she'd spoken hit me like a ton of fritters. My next question, again through a mouthful of egg that was now spilling onto the table in front of me, was: "Am I eating quiche?"

She nodded but, realizing that I'd asked her two questions, I asked, "Yes, you're purring? Or yes, I'm eating quiche?"

"Quiche," she purred.

Heroically, I spit the quiche into my napkin. I grinned debonairly and explained, "I don't eat quiche." Needless to say, she was impressed and begged me to go out with her again. Well, she didn't really beg. But we did date exclusively after that. By exclusively, I mean that I am the only one that she dated, other than the football team.

The moral of the story is that you should take a girl to a nice buffet-style restaurant if you want to impress her. And play Division I-A football. Most importantly and, as I think I've convincingly argued, we must teach our sons that they should not eat quiche.

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