Not a single person flinched

We eat dinner together as a family,  it's an important time for us, we all eat at the dining room table, the TV is off and we focus solely on ourselves and our accomplishments for the day. Everyone gets their turn and often stories are acted out , hilariously I might add. Serious stuff is discussed as well and as much as I think we are trying to  teach the boys about the world , I'm learning just as much from them.

I remember one dinner not so long ago that will always stick in my mind.


It had been a long day , we'd completed basketball training, choir practice, another long day of work etc. We were finally able to sit down together as a family and focus on ourselves over another superb dinner created by the human dynamo wife , affectionately known as Squeaks (that's a another story ).

Everyone was chatting away, when the oldest son says "oh wow " put his fingers in his mouth and promptly slams down a tooth with a piece of meat (almost like a tail) attached to it right in the middle of all the food and plates. Everything went silent. 


NOT a single person flinched. Which is in itself interesting as the wife is quite uncomfortable around blood.


I froze. All eyes were on the bloodied tooth.

He went and fetched a tissue and he continues on talking with the tissue shoved in the hole where the tooth was to stop the bleeding. The conversation kept going, there were plenty of dentist jokes bandied around , dinner finished and eventually we drifted off to our after dinner / pre bed tasks. Another family dinner completed that would always be remembered.

That day I realised two things :

1) We are a hardcore family

2) That the ritual of dinner we have established is entrenched and nothing can disrupt it.


I cherish these times and I know that eventually my two little guys will grow up and have their own families and I am going to to remind them of the importance of eating together at dinner and I hope they have just as much fun as I do.