Maternal Rage

My partner reveals to me that whenever I steal a bit of food from our child's plate (whether jokingly or because he has lots to spare), she is suffused with an irrational rage which she feels only just able to suppress. As a psychologist, she finds this interesting and assumes it must be innate.

I test it out, and sure enough, on stealing a mushroom from his well-ladened bowl, she blanches and flashes me a look which is fairly disturbing. I mock the idea that we should take such things seriously, but she is unmoved - something so primal must be respected, she claims, and no, we have not 'moved on' simply because we no longer are squatting on the floor of a cave.

So, I say, when I trudge back from Aldi on a foggy evening carrying fresh bleeding chunks of grocery and enter the cave, you feel an overwhelming urge to present yourself on all fours on the kitchen floor?

Apparently not.
|