The Spaghetti Incident

When I was 10 years old, we had an unexpected event that put our family dynamic into perspective. It's something that Loyd and I have always referred to as "The Spaghetti Incident."

It started one evening when Mom was making dinner. She was preparing spaghetti. Every time we have had spaghetti in the past, I couldn't eat the spaghetti sauce because there were onions in it. I would just eat the pasta plain with some salt. As I've mentioned before on a previous YouTube video (click here), I had a real aversion to onions. Mom told me I was not going to eat the spaghetti plain this time. I was going to eat the sauce with it like everyone else. Mom had not started making the sauce yet. I asked, "Well, Mom, if I have to eat the sauce, can you not put any onions in it?" She said, "We'll see."

This shouldn't have been that hard to comply with. Mom did not make the sauce from scratch. She had the powdered mix that came in a packet that you add water to and any other ingredients that you want. How hard is it to not put onions in something that doesn't already have it?

All four of us sit down to dinner. Mom has already put our portions on our plates with the spaghetti sauce. I look down at mine and go, "Mom, this has onions in it."

"Yes, the recipe calls for onions."

The spaghetti and the sauce were still in separate bowls. "Can I just get some plain spaghetti?"

"No. I worked hard on this dinner. You're going to eat what's on your plate like everyone else."

"May I please be excused?"

"No, eat your food."

My Dad chimed in: "You eat your food right now or I'm going to spank you!"

I put a fork full of spaghetti in my mouth and started chewing. I don't mind the taste of onions. What I can't stand is how it feels like I'm eating bugs when I'm chewing on them. After chewing a bit, the image that I was being forced to crunch down on bugs flooded my mind and I couldn't keep the food down. I threw up on the table.

Immediately, Dad smacked me in the head. I was knocked out of my chair onto the floor. I looked at my hand, which had some of the vomited spaghetti on it. Dad then took off his belt and started beating me with it.

Then Mom did something I'd never seen her do before. She started crying and screaming something (I don't remember what she said) and she pounded her fists against Dad. She then ran out of the house. We heard her get inside her car and take off. None of us ran out after her.

Dad told Loyd and me that we needed to clean up the mess. We started taking stuff off the table and putting it in the kitchen. We didn't eat any more food. Dad didn't say anything more about punishing me. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that he was probably thinking how nice it would be if Mom didn't ever come back.

While we were waiting for Mom to return, Loyd suggested to me that most women who run out of the house like that wind up going to a bar. (Such was our experience from watching too much TV.) I told him I didn't know what Mom was doing. We wondered when she was coming back.

She came back home about 45 minutes after she left. None of us knew what to say. We didn't say anything. She didn't say anything. And we never spoke about that night again.

Years later, Loyd wrote a college essay about the Spaghetti Incident. I didn't read the essay, but he told me that he theorized that what happened to Mom was that she realized that her hopes for having a regular, happy family were completely shattered in that moment. That's probably true, but it seemed like we just went right back to our normal, dysfunctional dynamic with the only change being that we were more aware of what kind of family we were.