Dinner Bell.

When I was younger my sister and I would, more often than not, play outside after school with neighborhood kids until it was dinner time.
We knew it was dinner time when our mother would stand out on the front porch and ring a bell.
It wasn't a loud bell but it had high timber and we knew we had to come home within the next five minutes after hearing it.
No actually it was 5 minutes after she began ringing it, but when we were zooming around hiding in the bushes or riding our bikes all willy nilly we didn't always hear it because dadgummit we were in the middle of something!
But ring it she did and under the threat of some random extra chore for tardiness we usually bolted home.

The family dinner bell.

This ritual occured until we got old enough to cook for ourselves and decided to not carry the burden of sitting at the table for 3 hours after dinner was over because we refused to consume some horrible concoction our mother thought we needed in our diet.
Although to be fair we were pretty healthy and did not take vitamins back then or have bouts of sickness that required hospital stays so maybe........
M a y b e...
Meals though were pretty routine and pale because the only spices we had in the house to make meals interesting were:
Salt...for everything.
Pepper...for company--to show how fancy we were.
Cinnamon... for bread and toast.
Nutmeg...for custard pie.
That is it!
Even regular mustard was for people living in the fast lane.
So....
I bring this up because I'm thinking of starting a new blog where people who are nervous about the aging process can ask me all types of questions then receive semi-researched but mostly cockamamy speculative answers and take some stress off of their worried old shoulders.
Such as:
Q: Why do old people eat dinner so early?
A: Well, gentle reader it is because they could die at any minute and they feel the need to get one final meal in their bodies before the sun goes down or people* will sneak their food away under the cover of darkness!
And driving after dark to get food or anything is practically a suicide mission.
I find that as I get older that this early meal regimen is adhered to with every meal.
Why take the chance?
Food is the highlight of the day.
Heck, food is the highlight of life!!
Dead people don't get excited if someone mentions mashed potatoes!
So hearing the dinner bell or watching the clock in anticipation of the next meal means that life is good!!!
Yes, yes it is.
Where is that cake from yesterday?

Thanks for being here.


*people? People, being no one really, because who does that? Dogs m a y b e, but even they aren't that crazy about applesauce. But have you ever tried to argue with an 85 year old who is hungry?