I Must Say by Martin Short Read Free Book Online

meat from the turkey, but not a turkey leg:

    MICHAEL: The dark meat is on the leg! You don’t want a leg! Honest to God, I haven’t got—I haven’t got the mind to handle that problem.
    MOM: Nora’s, uh—
    MICHAEL ( interrupting ): You’d have to take a Goddamned file and file it off and shred it!
    NORA: Just calm down.
    MICHAEL: It’s the only way you could do it!
    DAD: He wanted dark meat, did he?
    MICHAEL: Yeah.
    DAD ( angrily ): Well, dark meat’s all on that Goddamned leg !
    NORA ( to Brian ): It’s not worth it.
    BRIAN: Now he’s, now he’s starting to—
    DAD ( to Brian ): Pick up the leg and chomp the dark meat !
    NORA ( to Brian ): Just close your mouth.
    BRIAN: Okay. Okay, Nora.
    MICHAEL: The only thing we could do is cut it up!
    BRIAN ( now exasperated ): All right! All right!
    MICHAEL ( surprised ): What happened?
    BRIAN: Shut your mouth, Michael! Just shut your mouth and everything will be—
    DAD ( to Brian ): Shut yours , now!
    BRIAN ( defensively ): Okay! Okay. I’ll shut mine, too, Dad.
    DAD ( trudging off to the kitchen, speaking in a “mentally challenged” voice ): “I waaants da dark meat . . . Darrrk!” ( Returning to regular voice ) Three-fourths of the world don’t have a choice between—
    BRIAN ( to Dad, feeling picked-on ): Shhhh! Shhhh!
    DAD: —dark meat or white meat.
    NORA: Would you shut your mouth , Brian!
    MICHAEL: Well, which do they eat, then?
    DAD ( nattering on ): Blue meat or green meat.
    MICHAEL: Well, which do they eat, then?

    (Brian and Marty start to laugh.)

    DAD: They don’t have any choice of meat at all !

    (Dad re-enters the dining room from the kitchen with the exact slices of turkey Brian wanted.)

    DAD: Do you want more potatoes, dear?
    BRIAN: No thank you, Dad.
    MICHAEL: Are you not going to have any turkey, Dad?
    DAD ( raising his voice, irritated ): My stomach is so sore right now, dear, if you mention turkey to me, I’ll vomit right on the middle of the table.

    (Everyone starts laughing.)

    DAD: Now, if I wanted turkey, craved turkey, ate turkey, desired turkey—
    MICHAEL: I think the question required a yes or no answer.
    DAD: But I don’t need a kid asking me. I don’t need an immature person asking me things.
    Some years ago, in the 1990s, I had this tape fully transcribed—it goes on for thirty pages—and presented a bound copy to each of my siblings. I also used to make my kids, when they were little, read all the parts every Christmas Eve. I’d always cast my youngest child, Henry, in the Dad role, just so I could hear this sweet little boy saying “Dark meat’s all on that Goddamned leg !”
    P eople are often surprised to learn I’m of Irish descent and was raised Catholic; there’s a widespread misperception that I am Jewish. And I don’t think it’s just because I’m thrifty.
    No, this misperception actually makes some sense, because I was pretty much immersed in Jewishness from an early age. Westdale, the neighborhood we lived in, in Hamilton’s west end, had a large Jewish population. My parents’ best friends, the Paikins, were Jewish. The best nursery school in the area was the one at Temple Anshe Sholom, so that’s where I went to nursery school. And the friendships that I made there carried over into the rest of my childhood.
    I’ve always been a top-feeder, drawn to the smartest people in the room, and the simple truth was that the smartest kids in the schools I attended were the Jewish ones. We had a teacher in Grade 7, as we Canadians call the seventh grade, Miss Critchmore, who seated her pupils in order of intelligence, a cruel stroke that would never be allowed now: the smartest kids (in her estimation) in the front row, the dumbest in the back. I always strove to be in that first row, where my row-mates were reliably Mitchell Rosenblatt, Shelley Lipton, Rick Levy, Debbie Zack, Alex