Terror at the dinner table….
The dinner bell clanged. It was a small gold hand-held bell. It was not real gold, of course. There was no real gold in the house. And it was not all that loud. If any of the three children had music playing in their rooms it could not be heard coming from the kitchen. But all three children were trained to always watch the clock so they were always listening for the bell as five o’clock in the afternoon approached. Dinner was ALWAYS served at EXACTLY five o’clock. It was never late and it certainly was never early.
Mother stopped ringing the bell and placed it in its designated spot on the shelf next to the spices above the kitchen counter to the left of the stove. “A place for everything and everything in its place,” was one of her countless rules.
Within seconds of the cessation of bell-ringing a cacophony of footsteps commenced. There were the footsteps of Peter (age 10) coming up the stairs from his basement bedroom and there were the footsteps of Jennifer (age 12) and Sarah (age 5) coming down the stairs from their shared upstairs bedroom.
The children filed into the kitchen and then proceeded into the dining room where they took their assigned seats at the dinner table. The chair at the head of the table was always occupied by Mother. To her left is where Jennifer sat and to her…
