A Farmer in Leningrad

Mommy, the farmer's daughter, grew up to work in a profession that required her to live in the city. It also required her to do some fancy things once in a while.

Once Mommy and my sister were in St. Petersburg, Russia. (Back then, it was called Leningrad.) Mommy and my sister were visiting the Consul General at the U.S. Consulate there, and they were the guests of honor at breakfast.

Mommy and my sister talked with everyone around the table. The guests chatted, as the maid placed an eggcup with an egg in front of each person's plate.

Mommy did not know what to do with the egg in the eggcup. She thought about it, as she continued to talk, and she still could not figure it out. There was not an obvious way to handle it. She watched what the others were doing. What they were doing was waiting for her, the guest of honor, to start eating before they did. Here was a dilemma. Mommy kept talking, hoping that someone would get hungry enough to start eating, but none did. That is the way it is with diplomats. They have to be polite.

Finally, Mommy was very hungry, and she figured everyone else was, too. She decided to do a very brave thing. She would eat her egg as she was used to eating it. She seized the egg, dragged it out of the eggcup onto her plate, and smashed it with a knife.

The egg was very soft. It made a very big mess on Mommy's plate.

Everyone else then gently tapped open his or her eggs with a spoon and scooped out the egg bit by bit, eating it. My sister did that, too, as she whispered to Mommy, "I don't think you were supposed to kill the egg with a knife."

Poor Mommy! She was not able to eat very much of that egg, so she was very hungry after breakfast.

She was also embarrassed, but she was used to that. She had learned over time that things are done differently in the country and the city.

Her first embarrassing high society incident occurred while she was at college. Her best friend invited her to Philadelphia. There her family took the two of them to a very expensive restaurant for dinner. Mommy dressed up as best as she could, and she was on her very best behavior. At least, she tried to be.

She did not like soup, however, and had never been able to force herself to eat it. (That was very strange for a farm girl, where soup is a staple, but that is the way it was then with Mommy.)

So, when the waiter brought her a huge bowl of warm liquid, she picked up her soup spoon and enthusiastically started sipping what she considered to be a very tasteless dish.

The waiter looked very confused. "Miss," he said. "This is the finger bowl for washing your hands."

Conclusion: You can take the farmer off the farm, but you cannot take the farm out of the farmer.

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This story is excerpted from a collection of vignettes that I helped Doah, my severely mentally challenged youngest son, to write and publish several years ago (copyright 2003). It was my attempt to help him understand literacy and the purpose of writing and reading.