There was no peanut butter in the house, so I put Nutella on my sandwich. My mom didn’t like it when I did this—she thought the Nutella would make me fat. My mom cared about stuff like that. My boyfriend always shot her really dirty looks when she said this—he thought that I was fine the way I was and that, if anything, I could use to gain a few pounds, because I was so skinny from all my running.
My brother just scoffed at all of this snafu and ate all the peanut butter when I wasn’t looking, and then didn’t tell anyone that he’d finished it, so nobody bought more. He was pretty much constantly eating all the food we had around, thereby making it impossible for him to in any way a) pay attention to me or b) comment on my weight issues (or lack thereof).
Far away at college, my sister was a sad loss to the drama. She always had very firm opinions on things, and was almost always right. Besides, she was perfect and stunning and always knew what clothes to wear and what makeup was right and whether or not I was looking good or bad in any way, so her opinion would have been invaluable. But my sister got mad when anyone called and bothered her for trivial reasons.
My dad agreed with my mother when she was in the room, with my boyfriend when pressed, and when it was only my brother around, remained stoically uncaring. His most common response to any of these was a garbled, noncommittal mumble.
When I was done making my sandwich, I ate the Nutella out of the jar just because it tasted good.
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