Maryland Captivity - Beautiful Swimmers

But the railroad don’t run no more…

As usual, tonight we ate dinner in a spectacularly unsuccesful fashion. For once, I cooked; this effort yielded curried pork over jasmine rice. It also caused my father to accuse me of “sabotaging” our family by failing to properly deglaze the squash. At dinner, we actually spoke to eachother, discussing my father’s impending departure for a business trip. This means that my step-mother, Jaina and I will be alone for almost 2 weeks, which should be interesting given that my sister is by far the most responsible member of this trio. At one point, I told Patricia that we should throw a kegger and invite all of her friends. No one laughed. In fact, no one spoke. Indeed, Patricia stared at me for at least 30 seconds with a look that I would only give to someone with worms crawling out of their skin (formicating, as we call it here). Jaina finally broke this impasse by announcing that she wants to attend Wesleyan, the college where the band MGMT formed. My father retorted that she was much too young to be having this conversation, to which I replied, “What do you mean? We talked about me going to Harvard and Yale when I was 8.” He put down his fork and knife gently, looked up at me angrily and said, “You didn’t get into either. You didn’t get into any schools that would make you succesful.” I choked down my curry, tears mingling with the clotted milk and zucchini.

After dinner, my sister and I sorted through the laundry, arguing over which socks were hers and which were mine. Although this makes no sense to me, it occupied at least 20 minutes of my time. We take comfort arguing here. It was easier to differentiate towels, though, since hers have a little monogrammed handicapped sign embroidered in the lower right hand corner.