Country music and lobster bisque: A story of compromise
By Sarah DeLong
IV Leader Staff
I am in love with a wonderful guy. My boyfriend is tall
and sweet and from the suburbs of Chicago. His family lives in a modern house
built in the middle ‘90s with a lovely brick fireplace, skylights and a fully
furnished basement. His mother makes him steak dinner every Sunday for lunch.
The whole family jumps into their Eddie Bauer Edition Ford Explorer and go eat
somewhere that gives you more than one fork twice a week.
My family lives in a house full of character built in 1900.
Our backyard is a corn or bean field in the summer and frozen tundra in the
winter. Our basement is old cobwebby and drafty. We eat steak often as well, but
we know where ours came from because we butcher our own beef cattle. We don’t go
out to eat often because it takes so long to drive anywhere worth eating. We
know what a farm auction is, we know Alan Jackson, and we know what co-ops are.
This story isn’t to prove that one of our lives is better
than the other. I am hoping to show that even the most diverse people can fall
in love and have an extremely happy relationship full of the funniest situation
imaginable.
I love to go visit my man’s family because they are so calm,
and my family is big and rowdy. It’s like a little vacation for me. I went up
there for New Year’s and encountered something so bizarre I could scarcely
believe my taste buds.
I hate seafood and had been informed under the table that we
would be dining on Lobster Bisque for Sunday dinner; I knew what I had to do. I
helped his mother dish a strange pink soup that look like pepto bismal into
bowls. If not for the large loaf of French bread I may have died or worse gotten
sick when I bit the bullet and downed a whole bowl of this stuff. I slurped up
little pieces of bugs from the sea and found little crunchy parts of their tails
afloat.
I pushed my empty bowl aside and happily received a plate
with some steak on it, although feeling a bit uneasy about its unknown origin. I
never revealed my true feelings on the meal to his family. I feel like it was my
job to just push through and do what I needed to do — little did I know the
favor would not be returned.
My grandparents announced that they were going to be
celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary with a large party. They asked me to
bring my boyfriend so he could meet more of my extended family. I was so excited
to bring him along and show him off.
We got to the party and the live band was playing all the
classic country songs that mean so much to my grandparents. They were out on the
floor polkaing and “belly rubbin’”. Belly rubbin’ is hillbilly terminology for
close slow dancing. My sweet boyfriend is just writhing in his chair listening
to the songs of my heritage. He is complaining and covering his ears, asking me
if he can yell “freebird.” I tried everything to get him to have a good time and
stop being such a punk. We talked about what new was going on with us.
Finally after trying so hard to get him to chill out, I
sheepishly went up to my parents and told them we were leaving. This made my
parents really disappointed. Why did I concede to him? I am still wondering that
same thing. I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but my feelings were really
hurt that he couldn’t just bite the bullet for me.
As couples and friends, compromise is the key to making
things work. We can’t always get our way; if that was the case my man would be
slow dancing with me to all the country hits.
Take time to really think about things before you say them
and be a giver not a taker. I hope that my little story can help you next time
you have to eat pink soup.