Clash of the Titans

I'll admit it. Tim and I are set in our ways.

We like certain TV shows (Today vs. GMA, Boston Legal vs. CSI anything). Newspapers (minimum of 3 daily) and the Sunday morning snorefest of political shows are, to Tim, at least as important as oxygen. Lunch and dinner? Our goal on vacation is to see how many different places we can try.

Likewise, my parents are set in their ways. They like certain TV shows (GMA vs. Today, and every hour long crime drama up to and including reruns of Matlock from about 3 pm -11pm daily --what, are they planning to start second careers as forensic scientists?). Lunch and dinner? Why go out when there is perfectly good food in the fridge. Two week old pea soup will go perfectly with the six week old bread. Or how about some yummy black bananas? Mmm mmm. Good eats.

So it should have come as no surprise that while spending ten days together at Christmas, our ways were bound to...clash a bit. And yet we never saw it coming until it was too late.

First up...TV. If Tim is home, the TV is on. That's the rule. There is no radio, ipod or book that can compete with the king of all kings in entertainment and information, the TV. It is his lifeblood. God forbid he would miss one second of the 456th version of the same news story on CNN. He watches while he eats, works on his computer, goes to sleep, wakes up, showers (yes, we even have a TV in the bathroom). TV is huge in Tim's life, a fact that, apparently, my parents haven't tumbled to after 28 years.

Christmas day, I walked into the living room only to find him on his computer being forced to listen to Christmas music from my mom's ipod. And the TV was stone cold dead (aka, off).

"She just walked in and turned the TV off," he whispered in a tone that struck a delicate balance between someone in shock and someone who was headed to a bell tower with a high-powered rifle.

Of course, that was nothing compared to a few days later when she decided to leave the TV on, but run the vacuum for forty minutes. Or the day she invited a friend's grandchildren up to sing Christmas carols.

By day ten, he was in fairly serious withdrawal and panicked that he might have missed some minute detail about any one of the dozen news stories he was following, like what somebody had for lunch right before they had come on air to be interviewed.

Then there were the newspapers. Either he or my dad would run out every morning to get at least the New York Times and the Washington Post.

While Tim eagerly hunkered down on the couch with his diet coke and precious papers (ahh, does life get any better than that?) my dad would scoop up another unread paper and proceed to read it...out loud...to Tim.

"Did you see where so and so...?" "How about this story about the guy who...?" "What do you make of this editorial?"

Tim tried to escape, once, but my father simply followed him out to the balcony and continued sharing (Actually, I think Tim forgot the whole balcony was screened in. Besides, jumping from the 4th floor probably wouldn't have killed him. With his luck, he would have just been hospitalized for several months and my dad would visit every day and read him the papers).

And finally: lunch and dinner.

My parents and I have never quite seen eye to eye on food. For example, I say if there is mold on it, it shouldn't be eaten. They think of it as a seasoning. Shrimp that has been sitting out for three or four hours probably equals a quick trip to the ER in my book, but apparently makes a great base for shrimp salad in my parents' book. Throwing caution to the wind to me means trying a new fusion restaurant, throwing caution to the wind to my parents means throwing out the 2 oz. piece of leftover steak sitting in congealed sauce that smells like a pair of dirty socks. Who are these people, and what did they do with my real parents?

And so the lunch ritual began around ten each morning: What were we going to eat for lunch? When would we eat lunch? Why go out when both the refrigerator and freezer were both full of perfectly fine food? Dear God, we didn't just go over to the store and buy more food??? So, there was no ham for sandwiches. You could scrape the sauce off the leftover one ounce of osso bucco, slice it, mix it in with the two leftover pierogies and create something better than a ham sandwich. And why go out somewhere when we could empty out the fridge by finishing off last weeks salad which was still perfectly fine if you rinsed off a few brown, slimy spots.

Let's just say that when we got back home, it was a toss-up as to which of us rushed to our empty fridge first and kissed those barren shelves. After, of course, we stopped for the papers and Tim turned the TV on.