zozee

I'll never forget the time I was about 12 years old, and went in to a fast food restaurant with my mom and dad. (Both had been raised on farms. My dad milked cows, my mom tended sheep.)


This was well before you could order vegetarian food and have people understand "no meat." My mom said she wanted a cheeseburger without the burger.

The cashier (maybe 16 years old) said they couldn't make it that way. (Clearly, because they never HAD, the girl assumed it was impossible.) Never wanting to leave a person in their ignorance if she has a teaching moment, my mother seized the opportunity. (Mind you, a lunch crowd was forming behind us.)

Mama said, "Where does cheese come from?"

The girl : "I don't know. The store?''

Mama: "I mean, before the store, do you know where it comes from?"

Girl: No....?

Mama: It comes from a cow.

With a puzzled look, and I kid you not, the cashier asked, "Really? How do they get the cheese out of the cow?"

I don't know when I had ever heard my mother cackle so hard in public as that moment. Even my dignified daddy couldn't contain his laughter. He told me later he pictured squeezing Velveeta out of ole Bessie.