Dinner Conversations

Growing up, there were not a whole lot of conversations considered sacred around my dinner table. Many bold and brazen topics were broached at that time when the sun was going down over the Pacific and the TV was clicked off so that we could all eat and discuss our days as a family. One such topic which has stuck in my mind and provided me forever with a mental image slightly more than a little disturbing had much to do with methane, or natural gas and the major contributors to earth’s plentiful supply of this highly sought after fuel.

My father, ever the delicate man, brought up this conversation with the following eloquently posed question: “Hana, do you know what farts are made of?” “Um, well, uh, what dad?” “Farts are methane, you know, natural gas.” “OK, why are we talking about this?” “Do you know which animal’s farts are actually contributing to an overabundance of methane in the air? Actually polluting with their farts?” I don’t know how he managed to make this whole line of conversation sound like it was just normal information one person would impart to another over a chicken and rice dinner, but somehow, someway, he kept a straight face—even while staring my flabbergasted, jaw dropped expression in the eye. “Cow’s Hana, cow’s fart so much that some scientists say they are polluting our air.”

When some of my composure was regained I tried to brush this topic off, in a similar way that people who figure themselves for the gullible butt of a joke will try and see if a practical jokester is pulling their leg or not. “Come on dad, you have to be kidding me.” Here’s where that familiar twinkle came back into his eye and I knew that he knew he had roped me into this one. “Well, it would be amazing if we could harness all that methane escaping wily-nilly from flatulent cows and put it to good use.” At this idea we both exploded into peals of laughter, and the awful image of a field of cows walking around with glass bottles strapped to their butts to “harness the methane” became permanently implanted in my mind.

I find this image disturbing, I really do—in fact, I still find myself smirking when I drive by a field of cows (living in Southern Georgia, in the county none the less, this is not an unusual sight). My father, ever the thinker, tinkerer, mad scientist, felt that farting cows were appropriate dinner conversation for that fateful night—and my adult life is now scarred by ideas of bottle-butted cows. I have pondered many times, just how much time he contributed during his day to this bottle-butt idea, and if for even a millisecond he seriously put his mind to work on the logistics of this particular brand of “methane harvesting.” Most of all--now I fully understand that I owe my inquisitive nature—albeit tactless at times ideas to my father and his indiscriminate dinner time topics.

Thanks dad for making me smile when I see commercials for California Cheese. Thanks for giving me hope of future conversations with my growing family, as we huddle around our own dinner table, possibly with some classical music playing softly in the background, to discuss such necessary things as “methane harvesting.” If only I can enrich Ocean’s life with such broad and tasteful ideas, I’ll feel as if I’ve accomplished what I was put here to do. The first time I catch a glimpse of a smirk on Ocean’s face while I’m driving past a cow pasture, I’ll know that she too will feel the richness that I have grown to know and love. The richness one cannot truly know until they have felt the power of imagining a whole herd of cows with bottles strapped to their butts.