Corn is flying everywhere as my husband shoves a cob all the way into his mouth.
me: you know you are literally eating that like a pig? I do not mean the old cliché, you are eating like a pig. I mean literally – like a hog – on a farm.
My husband thinks this is hysterical and starts laughing causing the trajectory of the corn to actually reach my son and me.
me: Dude, you are disgusting.
son totally laughing now: Can I get a “snort” papa?
me: This is great, I am so thankful you don’t get your table manners from your father.
husband: That’s what woman are for, Boo, they’re for Civilizing Men.
me: Great, I thought that’s what mom’s were for. Too bad my “oldest” is so hard to train.
This is not the first time we’ve had this conversation. It certainly won’t be the last.
While I was trained to hold my fork correctly, use my knife to cut and push food onto my fork. My husband doesn’t ever even touch his knife. Twelve years I’ve been putting a knife next to his plate, and for twelve years that sad lonely fork has been forced to take a bath even though it was never dirty. For twelve years I have had to endure the stomach turning visual of him pushing his food onto his fork. Four fingers touching his plate, touching his food – pushing it onto his fork. Four fingers that may have been up his nose, touching the dogs butt, who the heck knows? I don’t know. I stare at him sideways, because looking straight on makes the food that made it to my stomach the Correct Way want to join his on the plate.
me: Kim, please. Could you just try eating like a Person? Be a good role model for your son?
husband: What? What’s the big deal? He knows he shouldn’t eat like this in public.
me: Oh, so the public is good enough for good manners. But I should feel like vomiting whenever you are eating a plateful of chicken, chopped onions, mustard and BBQ sauce with your hands. Not to mention the 500 crumpled up disgusting BBQ mustard sauce covered napkins that creep into my personal space and threaten to attack my plate with their vileness.
husband: Well, just don’t look.
It is impossible not to look. It is impossible to turn away from the fascinatingly disgusting train wreck that is my husband’s table etiquette.
Haiku
Emily Post rolls
In a grave of mushy corn
Sad lonely knife cries
Jen Kehl 
I had to say “At our reception please chew with your mouth closed.” It was my wedding present.
Jean – I am seriously Laughing Out Loud!
OMG Friend! HAHA, I so feel this. I got massively angry with my husband the other night because he was shoveling Annie’s Mac and Cheese into his mouth with his fingers while standing up in the kitchen, five feet away from the table with the silverware drawer open. I was like “NOBODY IS THAT F#CKING HUNGRY, @SSHOLE!” Ugh. Pigs. Pigs. Love your haiku too!
OMG Kristi – these comments are awesome! How is it all of our husband’s are like this???? My husband shovels standing over the sink all of the time! And as if the dishes in the sink weren’t dirty enough, now they are covered in his disgusting droppings!
Good to know there is universal husband pigdom. Or is it bad to know there is universal husband pigdom?
I have 4 boys also so if we ever make it through a dinner with closed mouths while chewing and no farts, I will probably pass out from shock.
Oh Angela, that isn’t what I wanted to hear!
This makes me so thankful that hubby’s only major mealtime flaw is parking his elbows on the table! Though, if I set aside a serving of something for one of the kids and he finishes before they get to it, he’ll snarf it down without thinking about it, and “apologize” once the kids decide they’re ready to eat it.
Thanks for linking up to the Glitter Fart hop!
Jessica mine does the same thing. And then when I say, hey! That was for Isaiah. He says, he never eats the stuff you put aside anyway! Meanwhile Isaiah is crying because papa ate his corn!
This kills me, because my brother and I used to get kicked out of the dinner table for laughing so hard we were hysterical. Why were we laughing? Because our father’s corn on the cob consumption was SO. Disgusting. Pig-like even. It was a spectacle that rivaled a circus freak, and we could not contain our hysteria. Way to call it. Hey, remember how we met? IRL? xo (No, wait, I retract my xo, remembering that that’s not really your thing. ) 🙂
Oh now I can hug it out Stephanie! I just don’t want to be forced to emote! Meanwhile your story is HYSTERICAL!!! I can’t believe there is a person out there who has experienced the EXACT SAME THING!
Love the haiku!! My husband does this, too. He also piles seconds onto his plate as though he won’t be eating again for another month . . . and then never finishes them, and proceeds to complain about how he “ate way too much”. I stopped keeping serving plates/bowls on the table were we eat, because he had a habit of eating right out of them, which drove me batshit crazy…but the mountains of seconds on his plate is just as bad. And I don’t get it, because his parents are old-school when it comes to table manners! He didn’t develop his bad ones until he was living on his own.
~sigh~
Oh My Gosh Kelly! Your husband is my husband! Same thing, eating out of the serving dishes AND piling on way too much food then complaining that I LET HIM EAT TOO MUCH!!! Man. His mom never would have let him get away with that!
I love that haiku! We could sure use a civilized woman in ComfyTown. I’m the Mom and I was raised by a pack of really stupid wolves, table manners literally never even came up. In fact, when my mother heard that there is a dinner theater restaurant called “Medieval Times” where they don’t have silverware, she was thrilled and called to tell me how much I need to go to there.
I wish I had a better argument to defend people like your husband, but you Civilized People may just need us wild beasts in an event like a Zombie Apocalypse or something just as real and dire 🙂
Joy ~ When that Zombie Apocalypse hits and I need someone to help me tear off a limb and eat it with my hands, I’ll be looking you up!
That is so gross. I don’t think I could do it. You are a strong woman.
Sarah! You crack me up! I can barely take it myself!
ZOMG! That would be a dealbreaker. And Kristi’s. WOW! I got lucky with my back-arsehole-of-nowhere-culchie-Irishman; he’s proven trainable.
Lizzi – I wish! Mine is worse than our dogs.
Holy sheot, dude, I thought that first line was going to say “ass” instead of “mouth.” I was laughing hysterically before getting to the end of the line, and then when I did see that I had it all wrong, I continued laughing hysterically. See? This is what you get for being cyberfriends with trashy dumbasses. 🙂
Shay- you are my most favorite Trasy Dumbass on the planet!
Lol, Jen. R and I have the same knife and fork issue. I’m like – here’s a knife. And he’s like – I don’t need it. YES, YOU DO. OH YES, YES, YOU DO.
My dad used to push food onto the fork with his fingers and it always grossed me out so, so much.
Funny post.
Deb – so sick and frustrating, isn’t it? Ewwww
You know what the (almost) greatest thing about this post was? I am now able to envision you speaking and hear your voice and your intonation in my mind as you say those things.
The second greatest thing was that you are hilarious and this: h, “so the public is good enough for good manners” made me laugh out loud.
The third greatest thing is the timing and the fact that I am so ripe for a little friendly, loving husband-bashing.
The fourth greatest thing about this post is that it gave us a glimpse into your every day life.
Loved it.
Katia- I am always ripe for husband bashing! So glad I made you laugh my friend!
My husband was raised by a neat freak. Yet some of the stuff he does I wonder if he was raised by wolves.
Sarah – raised by wolves and still 5-years-old
Oh thank goodness. It’s nice to know I am not the only one with an “oldest child” in the house. Sigh.
LOL Jessica!
You know what’s funny? It’s not my husband who has the terrible table manners – it’s my MOTHER! My kids are actually like “Do we have to eat with Grandma? She always slops her food around with her mouth open and makes weird noises.” Yes. ‘fraid so. It’s reality. I love the haiku!
My husband thinks I am crazy because his eating skeeves me out so much. I keep telling him, it’s just BASIC TABLE MANNERS not to eat such a huge bite of food that prevents you from chewing with your mouth closed. Ewwwwwwww!
My father was horrible like this…Luckily I found a guy who ate with some reserve…of course he was born in a third world country so he was used to starvation…
that would absolutely turn my stomach too. there’s one thing to be thankful for with my husbands torrid fear of germs – he’d NEVER touch his food like that!
I don’t have this problem with my husband, but my two boys are utterly disgusting. No matter how many times we try to correct their table manners I swear it goes in one ear and right out the other!
I love, “Can I get a snort”! That’s hilarious. My question is: is there really an elegant way to eat corn on the cob? Your haiku is genius!
At home, my wife and 3 daughters have the table manners of cavepeople. When we all leave the home and go into public, they turn into ladies. Thank God.
I’m trying to break the Mathemagician of the habit of breaking wind…all the time. *sigh*
Well Tamara, good luck with that.