A friend who has a PhD in Psychology is considered the underachiever in her family. Her father is a cardiologist and her mother is an OB-GYN. Her sister, to whom she does not speak, is an anaestesiologist and her brother, to whom she also does not speak, is a brain surgeon. “I’m the black sheep,” she told me. “I don’t cut people up and I can’t prescribe drugs. My parents feel they failed.”
When I mentioned that in most families (like mine) she would be considered a superstar, she shrugged. “We were raised to be hyper-competitive,” she said. She told me how she dreaded dinner growing up because her father would quiz the kids on current events, and only the child with the best answers got dessert. “It’s probably why we kids don’t talk to each other,” she said.
I had two immediate thoughts. One was that her decision to go into family counseling suddenly made perfect sense. The second was that after even one dinner with my family her father would deny all of us dessert for all eternity.
I was reminded of this at a recent family dinner when my sister asked my brother if he wanted grated cheese on his pasta. “Does a chicken have lips?” he said. “I don’t know,” said my sister; “DOES a chicken have lips?” The table went dead silent.
My brother said that of course chickens have lips because without lips, what would keep the saliva in their mouths? “Chickens don’t have saliva,” said my sister condescendingly, “that’s why they have to eat stones to swallow their food.”
This did not sound quite right, but before I could venture an opinion, my grown nephew said that he once saw a parakeet sneeze, and that you can’t sneeze without saliva. “So if a parakeet can sneeze it must mean that chickens have lips,” he said.
This led to a discussion of whether chickens can catch colds. “If the chicken is sneezing it must be sick,” said my nephew’s wife. “Maybe it has a fever.” My brother guffawed. “Chickens don’t get fevers,” he said, “they’re cold blooded.”
“Mammals are not cold blooded,” said my sister. This was true, but irrelevant. “Chickens are not mammals,” my brother corrected loftily. “They are reptiles.” This caused me to aspirate the olive I was eating, but despite the general outcry at the table my brother held firm. “I read that birds descended from dinosaurs and dinosaurs were reptiles, so birds must be reptiles,” he said. “That’s logic.” And he nodded with satisfaction as though he had made a telling point. “Check and mate,” I thought bleakly.
In our family, whoever is the loudest generally wins the argument, but tonight my sister turned to my partner. Although he is a veterinarian, and thus expected to know everything about the animal kingdom, after almost 20 vivid years with this group he has learned it is not in his best interest to speak. “Are chickens reptiles?” my sister demanded. He reached without ceremony for the wine bottle. “Farm animals are not my specialty,” he said with dignity. I looked at him and mouthed the word, “Coward.”
Since the expert was mute, the consensus opinion was that my brother was right and that since chickens were reptiles they couldn’t get colds and if they couldn’t get colds they couldn’t sneeze and if they couldn’t sneeze they had no saliva and if they had no saliva, then no, they didn’t have lips. I was about to point out that my brother’s opinion had just spun 180 degrees but I decided not to. My partner refilled his wine glass.
“I’m glad that’s settled,” said my sister, as she cleared the table. She looked at my brother, “Do you want dessert?”
“Does a chicken have teeth?” said my brother.