Member-only story
FOWL HUMOR
Love, Loyalty, and Chicken
And a side of creamy buttered corn
“Can you get me some rotisserie chicken around the corner?” my mother pleaded.
“Mom, you don’t have to beg. You know I’ll get it for you.”
“But you always seem like it’s such a nuisance?”
“It’s just that we always eat the same chicken from Boston Market, touched by the little hands of those teenagers with sailor caps. I know they wear plastic gloves, but it skeeves me out.”
Every Sunday when my father was alive, he took my mom around the corner for some chicken, mashed with brown gravy, and either buttered corn or macaroni and cheese as the side. Unfortunately, my father died of a heart attack at sixty-two, and my mother spent most of her waking hours in doctors' offices with various ailments. Neither one of them ate fruits or vegetables or anything other than a rotisserie chicken.
“You know your dad loved Boston Market. So why don’t we eat there for him?”
“Mom, I don’t mind getting the chicken, but I don’t want to sit in a crowded place with a bunch of dead chickens on roasting spits staring at me.”
Mom went to the bookcase and retrieved her money from behind my father’s wooden urn and a black statue of a Persian cat…
