Years ago my brother brought his then, new girlfriend (now wife) around for lunch with the family for the first time. Candace was a pretty shy and easily embarrassed young girl – had a tendency to glow red when under pressure (in fact, she still does).
Mum, wanting to create a good impression also, laid out her best lacy white tablecloth and all the fancy salad and such. The Oldman has always been a great stirrer of us boys and we give back twice as much.
Anyway, all was going well until Candy mistook the handle of the beetroot strainer, for the handle of the beetroot container. She reached across and tried to left the beetroot container closer to her, the strainer came up from inside the container and little red beetroot balls rolled all over the fancy white tablecloth. Candy turned the colour of the beetroot, Mum turned the colour of the tablecloth and the stains continued to spread out!
The Oldman lets out with an “Oh no, what have you done? That’s Joan’s best tablecloth too!”
So we joined in “Jesus Candy, if you wanted a bit of beetroot, someone would have passed you some – you didn’t have to go throwing it all round the room!”
Mum saved her and told us all to shutup – we had all been laughing throughout and actually feeling very sorry for the poor girl – but you just can’t let a chance like that go by!
Welcome to the family Candace – it can only get better from here.
And it did, and she’s still with us, with two beautiful daughters, and we still laugh about the beetroot incident to this day – and she still goes red!