Dining with the Queen of England

All of you out there who grew up with parents of the Greatest Generation will understand the circumstances of this blog. When our fathers came home from the War they acquired the knowledge of the military and disciplined their children the way the Armed services disciplined them. Since most of them were children themselves when the war broke out they knew no other means of raising us. This brings me to the subject of TABLE MANNERS. We could commit the most heinous childhood crimes and have it overlooked. But when you sat down to dinner we where expected to act civilized. Sit up straight, eat your vegetables, please pass the butter, and the most important element, no elbows on the table. I still carry the scars from the fork jabbed in my elbow when I forgot the rules. My parents did not believe in repeating themselves. Now I will come to the point of the story. My Aunt Dorothy was the sweet voice of reason during dinner. Her soft purr of “we’ll have none of that now.” always got our attention and saved us from pain. Now Aunt Dorothy was an Army wife and all five of my cousins were Army brats. At the time my Uncle Peter was a ROTC drill instructor at Morgan State College in Baltimore. I loved visiting my cousins because they were very clever and funny. When dinner time came we would all take our place quietly at the table, except my youngest cousin Jeffery who suffered from hyperactivity. So my Aunt employed a unique method in dealing with Jeffery and his table manners. When he reached out of turn for his food my Aunt would say, “What would the Queen of England think of your manners.” Tow headed with big blue eyes Jeffery would say “I don’t know.” This went on for five years. Always softly said, “What would the Queen of England think?” It was Thanksgiving 1967 when we surrounded the dinner table for a grand meal. And there was Jeffery reaching out of turn for the dinner rolls. Just at that moment my eldest cousin Christine and her roommate from college walked into the room and took their places at the table. Without any knowledge of Jeffery’s problem with the Queen the roommate sat quietly waiting her turn. Suddenly Jeffery,(not known for his politeness) speaks up and says,” Who are You?” The roommate replied, “Me, well I’m the Queen of England.” In conveying the results of this perfectly good response lacks any words to describe the outcome. All I can say is I still can hear Jeffery’s screams over forty years later. The Queen of England no longer dines at our table. No disrespect intended.