At dinner tonight I decided to eat left-handed. As it turns out, using your “wrong hand” to do everyday tasks (like eating or brushing your teeth or combing your hair) can not only improve your overall dexterity, but can help your brain… making you smarter in a way, I suppose. So lately I’ve been doing little things here and there with my left hand. I suppose it has the added benefit that if my right arm ever gets cut off I’ll be a little ahead of the curve adapting. Heh.
Laralee noticed my little trick right away (probably because I was having a hard time getting food in my mouth, and kept dropping it) and asked the kids if any of them saw something different about me. They kept guessing, and came up with some interesting ones:
- Dad got a haircut! (It’s true, but it was three days ago.)
- He’s wearing shorts. (Also true, but kind of meaningless.)
- His nose is pierced. (Not true.)
- His nose is smaller. (Possible, but probably not true.)
- His eyes are blue. (Not so; they’re still green.)
- Chopsticks Night. We’ll all eat with chopsticks, even if dinner is mashed potatoes and corn.
- Left-handed Night. Duh.
- Learn a Language Night. Laralee will learn the Spanish words for each of our food items and we’ll learn them; I’ll do the same in German.
- Yoda Night. Speak like Yoda, everyone must.
- Yes.
- No.
- Hello.
- Goodbye.
- Please.
- Thank you.
- I don’t know (insert language here), but I do know Bob.
The closest they came was when Alex mentioned that I was tilting my head kind of funny while I was eating. It was probably because I was having a hard time getting the fork in just the right position. It’s surprisingly hard to be ambidextrous at dinner!
Anyway, after we finally revealed the big secret, we decided that we’ll make mealtimes more interesting in the future. Several options were bantered about:
I suggested that in addition to learning Spanish and German food words, we spend one night each week learning phrases on as many languages as possible. Those phrases will be:
That last one is a tribute to Sarah, who knows how to say that in at least half a dozen languages.
Regardless of how all this turns out, dinners should be much more interesting!