Our normally sane and caring mom lost it for a time when we were children. How else to describe her decision to feed us liver every Monday for dinner?
My brother and I were in late elementary and early junior high school, and we reacted as gnarly boys do. We protested.
Loudly. And futilely.
Mom wouldn’t yield. She seldom yielded on anything. But liver dinner isn’t cleaning your room every Saturday or practicing the piano on weekdays before school. Liver dinner is in a category all its own, a category labeled “Send Help. Our Mom has Gone Crackers.”
So, condemned to Monday dinners in Stalag Liver, we adopted the only possible tactic: we smothered the foul organ in heaps of mustard and chased it with milk. Still protesting, of course.
I don’t recall a reaction from our younger sisters. They probably watched our remonstrances and thought, “What babies!” And then pushed liver around their plates in displays of fake eating.
In time, the liver dinners ended. We boys found something else to whine about.
And I’ve never eaten liver again.
“Foul organ” — you never think of it that way. Love it. My mom made me (I can’t swear for my brothers) eat liver. I didn’t understand, and we were pure carnivores, being farm folks and all. It was foul but not fowl. I survived but haven’t eaten liver since the last time she placed on the table where I sat.
Steve, I’m glad you survived that harrowing experience.