A well-planned spaghetti dinner goes awry.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
My watch alarm signaled that it was time for me to close my book and attend to matters at hand. Excited that my preparations for a wonderful dinner were nearly finished, I sprang from the couch and skipped quickly into the kitchen.
Deftly removing one of the spaghetti noodles from the simmering pot, I threw it against the cabinet above the sink. The noodle stuck. It was done! I briefly considered draining the noodles at that moment — after all, Mom and Dad said they would be home at 6:00 pm, and indeed my watch, the clock on the stove, the clock on the VCR, and the clock on the living room wall all indicated it was 6:00 pm. The chimes on the grandfather clock in the corner were even affirming the time.
“Well,” I said to myself, “They will be arriving shortly. After all, the game ended almost two hours ago.”
Mom and Dad — Virginia and Bob, not my real parents, but the couple with whom I was living that summer of 1983 in Washington, DC while working as an intern for a defense contractor — had gone to Baltimore with their senior citizens group to watch a major league baseball game. The Orioles were Dad’s favorite team, and he always got excited at the prospect of watching “the Birds” play.
I told them I would have dinner ready, but Dad had expressed his doubts that I could put together a dinner requiring anything more complicated than a can opener. “I’ll plan on eating a grilled cheese sandwich,” he told me. I took that as a challenge and boldly announced that dinner would be on the table at 6:00 pm.
The feast comprised the spaghetti; a homemade spaghetti sauce with ground beef, sauteed onions, garlic, chopped tomatoes, and black olives; a pot of green beans; and a loaf of garlic bread. And, as planned and promised, everything was ready precisely at 6:00 pm.
But … Mom and Dad weren’t home yet.
I had made spaghetti before, and there was really nothing to it. I wasn’t quite sure what to do, though, when the noodles were ready but the consumers weren’t.
I figured I could let the noodles simmer a bit longer.
I turned on the television and found a Gilligan’s Island rerun. I hadn’t seen that show in years! It was the episode where Gilligan got hit in the head, jarring one of his dental fillings, and his mouth became a radio receiver. Every time he opened his mouth, “Ride of the Valkyries” would play.
Ha! all you guys must have gone to the same cooking school because my husband used to cook noodles like that too! the kids hated it 
Id come home to glum faces and lots of left over pasta 
our chickens never complained…
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