Chapter Three: French Onion Soup

It was the eighth grade and Halo 2 was at its peak. I had recently subscribed to Xbox Live and could now take my hypercompetitive video game rage to the realm of the information superhighway. I had shed a few pounds since my grade school days, but my after school hours were still comparably unproductive. For hours a day, every day, I would don my headset and give my thumbs a good work out at the expense of my virtual competitors. I was even known to rant violently when my teammates failed to perform to my standards.

Despite the conveniences that Xbox Live offered me, I yearned for something more personal, more social, and, hopefully, more fun. So I decided to host a LAN party. Short for 'Local Area Network,' a LAN party is essentially a bunch of pimple-faced nerds physically linking multiple Xboxes for large multiplayer games. I figured my spacious, newly carpeted basement would serve as an ideal locale for such a gathering.

An optimal Xbox LAN party could hold sixteen people, four to an Xbox with four Xboxes. In the days before cell phones, texting, and driver's licenses became mandatory, grandiose plans could easily go awry. And sure as hell, my intentions broke down like a Compaq computer.

Two people showed up. Kerem, my witty, post-pubescent Turkish friend, and Jacob, an afro-headed Halfrican. Our numbers may have been few, but I knew were were going to play the shit out of some Halo.

My friends arrived and my mom issued a terse "Hello." The look on my mom's face exposed her obvious disapproval of my foreign choice in friends. Under my mom's watchful eye we retreated to the basement. I had a fairly modest television and gaming system already set up, and we jumped right in to some hardcore pixelated violence.

My mom came down a few times, offering food, drinks, etc, but I'm pretty sure it was just a ruse so she could spy on us. Once she departed from eye sight, I offered a few obscene hand gestures towards the spot on the stairs she had occupied just seconds before. Over the course of the afternoon my mom proudly declared various times that there was french onion soup upstairs, waiting whenever we were hungry. Junk food might have fit the bill a bit better. And my mom's cold and distant aura was certainly no help. So we passed on the soup.

After a few more thinly veiled attempts at spying on us my mom laid down the law of the land. Her time and labor intensive soup would have its day.

"Boys, come up and have some french onion soup. It's already laid out for you."

A command none of us dared to defy. We marched into my house's formal dining room, complete with full dinette set and fancy table cloth. Awaiting us were three steaming bowls of french onion soup, complete with melted cheese and bread bits. Little did we know, this would be the most awkward meal of our short lives.

As we approached our chairs Kerem and Jacob each offered a "Thanks, Ms G." My mom's response was a barely audible grunt of acknowledgment.

We sat down, and each of us cautiously sipped to test the temperature. But not my mom. She remained standing in the corner of the dining room. Watching us eat. Classic Patty G. As I found out, having your mom stare at you and your friends, noiselessly scrutinizing every movement, can put quite a damper on dinner table conversation. We remained mute and kept our motions slow. With little else to do, Kerem, Jacob, and I exchanged fleeting moments of eye contact. However, none of us dreamed of meeting my mother's intense gaze.

To make matters worse, these bowls of soup were monstrous. Absolutely filled to the brim. It was as if my mom wanted to keep us glued in those seats until judgment day. I knew none of us had the stomach to polish off the massive volumes of broth. Just a few minutes in, and me and the boys were all desperately looking for an excuse to get out of there.

So I stepped up to the plate, and excused myself from the table. Kerem and Jacob followed within milliseconds. There was easily at least two thirds of the soup remaining in each of our bowls. But we just wanted to go back downstairs and play some freakin' video games.

We returned to the basement for more Xbox action, but all three of us couldn't forget what had just happened. I don't think we'll ever forget what happened, actually. That was the first time close friends had directly experienced the coarse parenting my mother was capable of. Up in that dining room, Kerem and Jacob were able to feel my mom's emotional presence (or void, rather). That place where comfort, warmth, and approachability had long since departed.