Pretty much since we passed the here-comes-the-airplane, open-the-hangar stage, I’ve been trying to get Arthur to stop gesturing with his utensils. Particularly loaded utensils.
So last night at the dinner table I said:
Don’t wave your pork at me.
Pork is a funny word.
The mother of a friend of mine used to stab him with her fork when they argued at the dinner table… but never when it was loaded. There’s something not-so-vaguely suggestive about “Don’t wave your pork at me” though……. if he weren’t your son.
Well, yes, I noticed that (after I said it), but he was laughing so hard that it cracked ME up and the other connotations didn’t matter.
I love referring to a ‘pork store’ any opportunity (spelt right!) I have. I kind of crack up anytime I see a pork store.
For those not from this coast, I suspect it is a fairly local phenom, quite Italian, oh so Sopranos. But we got these little pork stores all over.
Do you need anything while I’m out? I’m running to the pork store.
A hundred years ago, when I was friends with Martin, there was a shop called Bucky’s Pork Store about half a mile from his house.
I loved telling him how I’d passed ‘your father’s pork store’. (His father’s name is Bucky.) He would never crack a smile, but me, I was all a’giggle.
Pork store is like, Essex/Passaic County. Very localized.
There was a standup comic I saw once, who was talking about the difference between Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. First he did a great riff on how smart Jeopardy contestants were (“I’ll take, Things Only I Know for $500, Alex”), and then he said, once your self-esteem is just on the floor, you get to lift yourself up by watching the idiots on Wheel.
“A STITCH IN TIME SAVES _____
“I’m going to go with PORK, Pat.”
AHHH! Too funny! This is one of my favorite quotes. Something we say around the house. In fact, I can’t make a roast pork loin or cutlets or chops without one of us saying “A stitch in time saves pork.”
Oh wait, it was Buck’s Pork Store.
Still cracked me up.
And this was Saddle River… Bergen County. It was a bit of an anomaly.
And really, “I’m going to go with pork, Pat”, is to me, funnier, than “A stitch in time saves pork”, in terms of shit to say around the house.
We say both. But the stitch in time thing is more popular.
There’s a really good breakfast place (branches in the Haight and South of Market) called the Pork Store. Must have been founded by a Jerseyite.