An All-Clad American Family
We drove around in well-worn, rust-colored Chevrolet New Yorker in the late seventies; the perfect car I always envisioned us showing up as studio audience members of The Price Is Right. As a kid I remember my mother always complaining about money and I couldn’t understand why she would repeatedly refuse to write in for free show tickets. “Mom, why don’t you try out for the Price Is Right?” I would question as we stood in the check out lane at a happy, suburban Shop Right supermarket. She would always frown at the cashier after she announced our total grocery bill and my mother would repeat the amount as if the teenage cashier was a shady car salesman. My mother would discretely reach into her purse that was as tight as Fort Knox and out of it would appear the crispiest twenty-dollar bill and in her thick Greek accent she would announce, “Because the price you pay on The Price is Right is never the price you think you will pay”. I never understood what that meant until I had the opportunity to dissect her prophetic words years later when one of the prize models sued Bob Barker for sexual harassment and I got the long-awaited ‘ah-ha!’ “See, ah-ha! I told you”, my mother said as she held the newspaper in one hand and poked through Bob Barkers face with a pencil in the other. “The price is not right. Ha!”
I once asked my Dad if he thought Mom had had an illicit affair with Bob Barker at some point in their marriage since she had so much distain for the good-looking game show host and my non-English speaking father would simply ask, “Elisat affair? Who is Elisat?” This was the same Dad who would answer to any three-lettered name because they all sounded alike to him. It remains a mystery why I was able to speak English by the fifth grade.
For weeks I went on fantasizing what was behind door number two. I envisioned myself on stage, not as a prize girl but as a Price is Right contestant, repeatedly nodding yes not because I was asked a question but because that’s what contestants seemed to do when they were nervous. Bob would lean in with his long lollipop mike and prod, “Kali, do you want to know what’s in your showcase?” I would uncontrollably nod yes. “Kali”, he would lean in again, almost drunk this time, “Do you wanna know what’s in your showcase?” The uncontrollable nods would be followed by a sharp and nasty ‘what’ on my part and then Bob would finally broadcast, “Kali, here is your showcase!”
Curtains pullback. On stage would be the gleaming All-Clad American Family I could have only hoped for as a ten year old. The announcer would introduce, “It’s a new… All-Clad American Family equipped with two English speaking parents, a Disney family vacation and a lifetime guarantee of embarrassment free living with your new family!” and they would cue the closing music and cut to commercial while I would be usher back stage to greet my new family.
“Open your menu and stop day dreaming!” My mother’s words jolted me back to the sad reality of a Big Boy’s Restaurant on a Sunday afternoon after church. My older brother would kick me in the shin under the table and tease, “Yeah, wake up! She probably still thinks she’s gonna get on the Price is Right. Idiot”. I didn’t mind much my brother’s teasing words since I knew they always came with an ensured backhand to the head by my Dad telling him to wise up.
To continue this predictable pattern, my mother, the martyr, would then chime in saying, “When I grew up, there was no free dishwasher let alone dishes.” My older sister who was the stone cold fixture in the family would often respond to my mother’s lamenting with a “that’s sucks” or an “oh, well” while reading at the table the latest Jackie Collins novel.
A dining experience with my family was more chaotic than the race riots of the seventies. Sadly, the person that would always fall victim to our arrival would be the poor waitress who found us sitting in her wait station. My father was never happy with the food while my mother would make abiding accusations that the restaurant looked like they failed their health inspection. Again. The waitress would come over for an initial meet and greet and fifteen minutes into the meal, we would never see her again. It would typically start off with a drink order and within seconds spark an argument at the table. “You drink too much soda”, my mother would say to my sister, “that’s why you have the zits”. And my sister would mockingly counterattack with, “No, I have a-the-zits-because its genetics” and then turn to the waitress requesting, “I’ll have the largest Coke with ice on the side, please.”
My brother would always have the bicker-free healthy glass of milk and I, knowing that I was in for the long haul, would play it safe with a glass of ice water. My father would always order a coffee but never had anything good to say about it and my mother would steer clear of beverages since she would often reveal to us like an inside trader, “The dishwasher is always dirty. They don’t change the water”. These snide comments would drive my sister crazy and she seemed to always have the last word while blaming it on me. “Kali seems to think that if you at least slept with Bob Barker, you’d have a dishwasher by now and you could bring your own glass”. My mother’s only defense to that was an unpatriotic comment like, “I should never have come as a slave to this country.”
“Then that must have made you the only white person on the Amistad”, my brother, with the genius IQ level, would always seem to punctuate the Sunday brunch with a historical reference, never allowing my mother to get the last word.
The Price is Right music would fade up as I envisioned myself spinning The Big Wheel one more time. I mean, I was ten and the show was heading into its third decade. I still had time, years really, to win that All-Clad American Family.
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