My furiously annoying eating habits

I have to tell you a secret…when i eat…I’m a quirk machine! I have so many furiously annoying and sometimes funny quirks when i eat, i sometimes think of giving up food altogether (hey! I can say things i don’t mean when i want to be dramatic!). So anyway, over the years i have developed such strange eating habits that all my relatives and friends look at me and tsk. For eg: i cannot have a chicken bone or fish bone on my plate without demolishing it to mush. I crack open the bones, suck out the marrow and chew up whatever remains.

My aunt always says that their dog keeps barking at me because i eat up the bones he is supposed to get! And i don’t blame him! If anyone puts all that pulverized debris into the dog’s bowl, the dog would probably have to be surgically removed from that person’s butt! I mean i was so obsessed with bony chicken pieces, that while attending a wedding when i was around 8, i have sat for half an hour staring at the juicy chicken leg on the plate of the person sitting opposite. I screamed to kiingdom come until that chicken leg was surrendered to me!! Thankfully he hadn’t touched it!

And this is just the tip of the iceberg people. The moment i touch my food, i HAVE to, just HAVE to have my left leg resting on something. A table, a chair, a nice furry dog…anything at all! And it has to be my left leg. Once i start eating i become the Leaning tower of Pisa and i slant slightly toward my right and enjoy my meal (left foot up of course)! And oh my god!

The number of lectures my mum gave me about being ladylike and shutting my nethers to peering eyes…I’ve lost count. I forcibly changed my habit when i caught myself doing the same horrid leg stance at a top notch restaurant! Nowadays my rising left foot is given a swat by left hand to put it back into place!

This next habit has to be my most OCD ridden one. I take more curry than i take rice and i tend to finish the rice with the curries i don’t fancy as much. I keep all the good stuff for last. Chicken livers piled up, chicken skin piled up, praws wiped clean of gravy; piled up, chicken bones; very neatly piled up, fish eggs, tha brown bit of the fish…all piled up!

 And each morsel is enjoyed from favorite to mid favorite to all time favorite. I’ve had my hostel mates stare at me in utter awe! Probably like they would stare at some weird species in a zoo but hey! This is the way i eat!

I become JOEY when it comes to sharing food. I mean i can share. Kinda…sorta…
I have this uncle who loves grabbing stuff from others plates. We are a wedding and i select everything i like and pile it onto my plate and along comes grabby graberson and goes “hey! Is that chicken livers?” swipes it off my plate, stuffs it into his mouth and grins at me chawing happily! I draw the line at chicken livers people! Remember that! I shoot daggers of death at him when he goes “oh wow! Big prawns!” and swipes TWO of my jumbo shrimp!!

I scream which i swiftly turn into a squeak on account of it being a public place and all but i swear i lost my appetite! If you want something off my plate, just ask and we can go to being friends in the past tense.

My last habit must be the most annoying one. Oh not to me, but to everyone else around. I know this because several people have told me so. I still don’t care. It’s the way i set my plate. If i am eating chapathies, i can’t stand the gravy touching my fresh chapathies and turning it into mush. Once my mum poured meat gravy all over my chapathy and i almost had a fit! I made fresh chapathies and poured the side dish into a leak proof katori, demonstrating the art of nurturing my own OCD to my mum who just gawped at me!

Gravy over the rice is fine as long as the rice is right in the centre not touching any other curry. The non veg needs to be on the right side of the plate and the veges on the left. And heaven forbid if you should put pieces of fish or chicken or any other meat on top of the rice…you don’t want to see that side of me!

Time for dinner…chicken and chapthies. Mum has put the chicken curry into a katori and placed it on the right side of my plate beside some fresh and crisp chapathies. I have taught her well!