by Rita Rudner
My mother’s three most spectacular culinary failures involved a can of corn, a duck, and matzo balls. They were not featured in the same concoction but probably would have tasted better if they had been. I don’t know what prompted her to put a closed can of Niblets into the searing oven; I just remember the explosion. I was only around five, but I recall that I was in charge of picking bits of corn off the floor while she climbed the ladder and tackled the ceiling.
My father loved chicken matzo ball soup and complained that the matzo balls from our local delicatessen were inferior to the ones he remembered from his Catskills childhood. He recalled matzo balls that were light and fluffy and yet somehow had a heavier consistency. I think it was the phrase “heavier consistency” that was my father’s big mistake. One day my mother set out to make the matzo balls from my father’s youth from scratch. I watched her blend eggs, matzo meal, water, a little more matzo meal for heavier consistency, and what appeared to be gunpowder and then attempt to discipline the mixture into the traditional round shape. She then dropped the rolled-up balls of mush into the boiling water and watched them morph. After a few minutes she removed the first specimen from the pot with a slotted spoon and scrutinized it carefully. It was now in the shape of a human liver. She placed it on a paper towel and cut it in half. Although the outside was gummy, the inside was runny, so she stuffed in a little more matzo meal.
“I guess they need more cooking,” she said. “I’ll cut them all in half and put them back in for a while.”
It was like eating dried Silly Putty. We were fearful of breaking the garbage disposal, so the leaden bits of dough were finally tossed in the trash, and all three of us had new respect for the local deli.
My father’s “I’m bored with chicken and steak” statement led to the diabolical duck. For this dish my mother enlisted the help of a recipe. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a recipe for duck.
“A duck is just like a chicken,” she reasoned. “I’ll use a recipe for roast chicken.”
I remember her taking the duck out of the oven and encountering a sea of grease that in my brief life I had never seen emanate from a chicken. It was so slimy that as my mother served it, the poor bird almost slid off the plate.
Not wanting to waste a perfectly good duck, and continuing to make the faulty chicken/duck comparison, the next day she decided to make duck salad. Adding mayonnaise to a mixture does not make a dish less greasy. My mother put the chopped duck, eggs, celery, and mayonnaise in a bowl, mixed it up, and attempted to make me a duck salad sandwich. Even I said no.
Along with my mother’s lack of cooking talent, I also remember her remarkable personality. I remember the light in her eyes whenever she saw me. I remember her kind voice and her forgiving, patient nature. I remember the way she went out of her way to do things to make her little girl happy. I remember the smocking she painstakingly sewed on my pink-striped party dress and her hand-stitching together my first tutu (without a pattern, of course). I remember her surprising me and showing up on parents’ day at my summer camp in North Carolina days after undergoing a major operation. I remember her trying her best to keep a smile on her face as she battled a rampant cancer that refused to be abated. Most of all, I remember that she loved me. I still miss her. After all, she only died forty years ago.
Cooking aside, I only hope I’m half as good a mother to my daughter as my mother was to me.
* * *
I love to shop. I rationalize shop. I buy a dress because I need change for gum.
* * *
Go Ahead, Open This Bag
MY FATHER’S ANNUAL VISIT ALWAYS REMINDED ME that as we age we do not become less strange.
This particular year, my father looked a little drained as he shuffled off the plane. His usually neatly positioned white hair was disheveled and his shoulders appeared hunched.
“Dad, good to see you,” I exclaimed, administering the two-second father-daughter hug that we had perfected through the years.
“I thought I could do it. Turned out I was mistaken,” he whispered dejectedly.
“What do you mean?”
“The bag of peanuts won,” my father mumbled.
“You’ve come all the way from Miami to Las Vegas to visit me. I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist you make sense,” I demanded. “What game were you playing with a bag of peanuts?”
“I attacked the bag from every possible angle from the minute the flight attendant handed it to me. I just couldn’t open it.”
“You spent five and a half hours trying to open a bag of peanuts?”
“No. I rested periodically.”
“Didn’t the bag have a perforation on one side? Usually, if you look carefully, on one side there’s a perforation.”
“I checked. There was no perforation. Possibly it was a defective bag. I don’t know, I didn’t check other people’s.”
“Why didn’t you ask for help?”
“I’m a seventy-eight-year-old, two-hundred-pound man. What do you want me to say to the thirty-year-old, one-hundred-and-fifteen-pound female flight attendant? ‘Will you open this bag of peanuts for me?’ Why don’t I just put on a dress and be done with it?”
“How about the person sitting next to you?”
“I wish you hadn’t asked. She was an eighty-year-old ninety-pounder.”
“And she opened the bag with no problem?”
“She struggled. She finally stabbed it with a fork over Denver.”
“Why didn’t you stab it once you saw there was a way in?”
“Because I shouldn’t have to. I’ve raised a daughter, I’ve been a lawyer. Last year, when the last full-service island closed downtown, I even learned how to pump my own gas. I should be able to open a bag of nuts.”
“So what did you eat on the plane?”
My father looked at me in amazement.
“Honey, have you not been listening? I had no time to eat. This was a full-time job.”
We had arrived at the car, and I noticed my father reach for the door handle twice before he actually made contact.
“And what did you have to drink?”
“Three martinis.”
“Three martinis? Why did you have three martinis?”
“I never gave up hope. I kept thinking I could unlock the secret to the bag, and if I ordered one more martini, I could have the peanuts I deserved with my alcoholic beverage.”
“But it never happened and you just tugged at the bag and drank? You didn’t tell anyone you were my father, did you?”
“I had no time. Especially after the flight attendant passed out the bag of pretzels.”
“Again no perforation?”
“No perforation, but I eventually found a weaker side and opened the pretzels.”
“Thank the Lord.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t like pretzels. I think they’re nothing but burnt bits of bread. I don’t understand why people eat them. I think they’re more suited for packing material than for munching. It just encouraged me. It gave me a false sense of my own strength and ability and I went back to my original mission.”
“Where are the peanuts now?”
“I don’t really know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? What did you do with them?”
“Ifflusshdem,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“I flushed them.”
“You flushed the peanuts down the airplane toilet?”
“Not immediately.”
“You didn’t,” I barked, picturing my seventy-eight-year-old father urinating on a bag of peanuts.
“Yes, I did,” my father replied, leaning his head back against the car seat and smiling contentedly. “It was what they deserved.”
Future Reality Shows
Who Wants to Eat a Cow Dung Sandwich?
Lucky contestants have to eat a cow dung sandwich. We see the actual cows creating the contents of the sandwiches and watch the sandwiches being made. Who can eat it the fastest? The
winner gets a million dollars.
Who Will Shoot My Mother?
You explain on national television why you hate her, and the lucky winner gets to have someone shoot her. You choose where and how. You win a million dollars.
Who Wants to Marry a Serial Killer?
Serial killers fall in love too. Six lucky women get to spend time with a hardened criminal on death row…but only one of them gets to marry him, have sex with him, and be present for the execution. You win a million dollars.
Who Wants to Be a Shmillionaire?
This is just a logical monetary progression of the actual game show. You win a shmillion dollars.
Who Wants to Smash Their High-Definition Flat-Screen Television Set?
I do. Keep your million dollars.
A Hole in Eight
WHEN I WAS IN MY TWENTIES AND A DANCER ON Broadway, the thought of me holding a golf club was as likely as Eleanor Roosevelt wearing a bikini. To me, golf wasn’t even a sport; it was an excuse for older people to wear loud clothing. However, after straining a deltoid muscle playing tennis, tearing an Achilles tendon jogging, and dislocating a disc in my back performing a grande jeté, the concept of golf began to make sense to me.
In our middle age, my husband (whom I shall refer to as Martin because that is his name) and I have spent many a pleasantly frustrating afternoon whacking a small white ball across unforgiving sod. Golf reveals quite a bit about a person’s personality; for instance, I have learned that my husband is a perfectionist and that I am totally out of touch with reality.
Here is a typical verbal exchange:
“Good shot,” I say to Martin as I watch his golf ball fly high into the sky, swerve horizontally to the right, and land in a massively wooded area.
“Why do you say that? It’s not a good shot. It landed in a forest,” he replies.
“It looked good to me. It went forward.”
“Well, it was seven different types of crap,” he exclaims, not using the word crap.
“That’s not true. There are so many other things that could have gone wrong. You didn’t hit a house, you kept hold of the club right to the end, and, as I’ve proven many times, it is very possible to miss the ball entirely. You have many things to be grateful for.”
It is at this moment I shall impart to you my secret to happiness. It can be summed up in two words: low expectations. If you expect to be excellent at something, you will no doubt be disappointed. If you expect to be terrible, you can thrill yourself by actually being almost competent. You cannot low-expectate about everything, however, otherwise you will never make any money and you will have to live outside. I’m talking about things that don’t really matter in the long run, and unless you are or are aspiring to be a professional golfer, golf would certainly fall into that category. That’s why I have a good time playing and Martin is continually frustrated.
As frustrated as he is with himself, it is no match for how frustrated he is with me. A few birthdays ago I made the mistake of buying him golf binoculars. This is a contraption that allows you to see how far you are from your ball’s destination. If you line it up with the flag, it will give you the correct yardage. If you mistakenly line it up with the mountain behind the flag, it will cause you to swear uncontrollably, choose the wrong club, and ask if you can hit the shot again because it wasn’t your fault, it was those damn golf binoculars that your wife bought for you.
I am unable to line up these binoculars correctly, so I am not allowed to touch them.
“How far away from the hole am I?” I asked Martin, estimating myself to be maybe one hundred yards at the most.
Martin picked up the binoculars, squinted, and thought for a second.
“Twenty minutes,” he replied.
This was cruel but funny and also correct.
I play with pink balls. This habit immediately warns the poor, unsuspecting people who get paired with me to expect more than a few appalling shots. They are also pleasantly surprised when I land a ball on the fairway. I’ve heard many players whisper, “We’re going to be all right. She’s not as bad as I thought she was going to be.”
Here is another secret to my golf happiness. The equipment I play with is usually on sale at Target. It seems very few people want to be seen with pink balls. My husband plays with the expensive, super-duper balls that are surgically wrapped around a titanium core and are scientifically proven to go farther and faster, thereby making him apoplectic when he hits them in the water.
Never practice before starting a round. My husband spends at least half an hour practicing his drive, his second shot, his pitch, his chip, his sand shot, and his putt before he tees off, thereby increasing his anger at himself when he is on the course.
“I practiced that shot at the driving range and it was perfect,” I hear him moan constantly.
Well, more fool he. If I hit a good shot, I’m thrilled, and if I don’t…well, what do I care? It’s not like I practiced.
The maximum amount of strokes I can take on any given hole is eight. Martin actually instituted this rule in an effort to allow us to finish a round before dark. As a result, I no longer have to play the par fives. I just sit in the cart and write down an eight. I don’t inconvenience other players and I rest up for the next hole.
I don’t ever compare myself to the professionals. I figure they can’t tell jokes, I can’t hit a ball three hundred yards—we’re even.
What other nuggets of golfing wisdom can I impart? Don’t drink and drive. “I just need to loosen up a little bit” is something I’ve heard from a variety of men. Very often I’ll see a male foursome drinking beer and then trying to hit a ball. As far as I know, there is no scientific proof that alcohol improves aim.
Enjoy just being outside. I always say to myself, “I might have lost a ball, but I’ve seen a bunny.” It’s a privilege just to be able to look at a mountain while other people are working in an office.
If nobody sees you take a shot in the sand where the ball moves two inches, forget about it. Many politicians have forgotten things of far greater importance and gotten away with them. Eventually you will achieve a “good out,” as they call it. Just count that one.
Sometimes you will be paired with the most annoying people on earth. Put a cell phone to your ear and announce you have to leave because of a family emergency. This always works. Many people have done this to stop playing with me.
Never take a lesson. Just position yourself next to someone who is taking a lesson. This way, if you become worse, you can forget what you overheard, and if you become better, you have had free instruction.
Always aim for the gardener to ensure you won’t hit him.
When a new miracle club is advertised on television, don’t buy it. It will work, but only the first two times you swing it. It will never work again and you will always be trying to re-create your first two swings.
Try not to become too frustrated when playing behind slow players. Very old people sometimes get together to play golf. In fact, when I first heard the little boy in the movie say, “I see dead people,” I thought he was envisioning being behind a senior foursome. Bring along a pack of cards and play a hand if the course gets backed up.
Always keep the cart on the path or on the fairway. Do not attempt to bypass players. You do not—I repeat, Do not—know what is waiting for you over the hill. Once my husband became impatient with a foursome in front of us who not only were terrible but were attempting to play from the bionic tees. It was a new cart and the brakes were good, but they were no match for gravity. We ended up asking two young brave boys who worked in the golf shop to haul our formerly new cart out of a lake. It still beeps intermittently, reminding us of what we put it through, and Martin’s wallet still smells of fish.
In conclusion, enjoy the good shots and forget the bad; it doesn’t matter. I may be out of touch with reality, but I’m having a good time.
* * *
I bought a new wrinkle cream. If you use it once a day, you
look younger in a month. Twice a day, you look younger in two weeks. I ate it.
* * *
At What Price?
HOW FAR SHOULD PEOPLE GO TO ACHIEVE FAME, and more important, why do they want it? In the past few years we’ve seen Nick and Jessica ruin their marriage, Whitney and Bobby proudly peddle their dysfunctional relationship, and Anna Nicole film her day-to-day diary of madness that climaxed in her expiring from an overdose.
The habit of exposing intimate details of a life to garner attention has become rampant in our culture. If there is one thought I will drum into my daughter, it is that fame for fame’s sake is a completely empty experience. Fame should be a by-product (and not necessarily a good one) of achieving something extraordinary. It can then sometimes, if you’re very lucky, become a useful tool to help you achieve something even more extraordinary.
Paris Hilton would not be nearly as popular a figure if her explicit sex video had not flooded the Internet. I’m not saying she released the footage on purpose, but I do think if she had to do it all over again she would have smiled more. Am I wrong in thinking that a sizable portion of the new generation of celebrities can’t do anything? Madonna was my generation’s Paris Hilton, but at least she could almost sing.
Speaking of Madonna, remember the release of her book that consisted of nothing but naked pictures of herself? Remember the attention that it drew at the time? It all seems rather mild now. Madonna was the bad girl of the late twentieth century and even she has to be saying, “Could these young girls at least stay sober long enough to put on underwear?”
