How Can You Have Any Pudding?

Ye gods, the damn ungrateful brats just never stop screaming, do they? You work all day to bring home the bacon and they just turn up their noses at it. The very idea of it all, indeed! Why can’t they just eat their sausages like good little children, huh? Why won’t they just swallow, grin and bear it, and beg for more? Don’t they understand how hard Dad busted his own ass all day to pay for this? Don’t they appreciate how Mom slaved over a hot stove all night to put it on the table? I mean, really—who in their right mind would have the sheer nerve to push it away and demand their pudding? What the hell, son?

Listen you whiny little shits, I don’t care how much pudding Bobby and Suzy’s parents give them; hell, they could eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for all we know—they’re hideously obese enough, aren’t they? Do you want to turn out like that? Huh? Do you? No, listen to me when I’m talking to you! I will not have you insult my hard work and your mother’s righteous skills with your selfish, puritanical pouting, young man. I will not allow you to treat us that way, young lady. You’re going to eat that fucking sausage on your plate, and you’re going to like it, or so help me I’ll take off my belt right now.

I don’t care what you’ve read in school—what the hell do your teachers know, after all? They’re probably all pinko commie vegans anyway. Who does that Mr. Sinclair think he is? Who died and made him Secretary of Agriculture? Jesus, it’s not like any of them have had to slog through the killing floor day after day after day, is it? No, their lives aren’t awash in polluted effluvia, and they never will be, up in those shiny ivory towers. They have no idea what it takes to work for a living, raise a family, endure an office full of morons and a planet full of fools. Look at all those idiots! Look at all those boobs! Why, I’d wager they wouldn’t even know ham form haggis, the smug, sneering elitists!

Dennis? Hey, are you listening to me, son? Look what you did! Look what you did! You’ve made your mother cry, goddamnit! You’ve ruined dinner all because you can’t take a single solitary bite of sausage! Don’t you realize that there are starving people in Africa? Hell, there are even starving people in West Virginia! People who would walk on their lips through busted glass to even get next to that sausage. People who would never in their wildest dreams believe they could sit at a table like this; live in a house on a cul-de-sac like this; leach a cushy existence in an exurb like this!

I mean, go ask any of your snotty little friends in Cub Scouts, son. I’m sure all of them eat their meat with gusto; they’re all nice plump little boys, aren’t they? Hell yes, just like Marcy’s catty cheer camp sisterhood. They don’t tolerate any of that binge and purge behavior, no sir! Come to think of it, Marcy, you look like you’ve lost weight, baby. How ’bout you put away some of that sausage? Put some motion in those moves, girl. Jesus, you wouldn’t want those skinny chicken legs showing at halftime tomorrow night, would you? Your mother and I will be at the game, just like we promised, and if you know what’s good for you you’ll swallow that entire sausage whole, honey.

Look here, I’ll show you—it’s simple. See, you take the relish and mustard and ketchup and all those other condiments that God has seen fit to provide us, and slather them all over that big ol’ kielbasa. Damn right, just like that. See, that’s not so bad, is it? Is it? Good, now all you have to do is take that first bite…Go ahead, honey, we’ll wait, and…and—hey, Dennis, where the hell do you think you’re going? What? What’s on TV? Oh Jesus, that’s right! Quick, quick everyone—inhale that sausage and get your asses into the den—Top Chef is on!

Ah…now that’s better, isn’t it? No no, you’re not green at all, darling—what, do you think we’d poison you? Never in hell—where do you think we’d be without that tax write-off? Ha! How we get our meat doesn’t matter as much as us getting it in the end, does it? This is still America, kids—the Law of the Jungle is still the Law of the Land, after all. Kill or be killed. Is this a great country, or what?