“My favorite thing about Ambergris Caye is the fishing,” Don said.
“The fishing’s great,” I said, “but Belize has a lot to offer besides fishing. Have you and the family ever spent any time on the mainland?”
My friend Don is in town this week with his wife Hannah and their twelve-year-old son, Richie. They were treating me to dinner at their hotel’s restaurant.
Don said, “Not yet but this is only our fourth Belize vacation. I think maybe next year. . . .”
Richie interrupted our conversation by asking, “Dad, are bugs good to eat?”
“Be quiet Richie,” his mother said. “That’s disgusting and it’s not polite to get into the adult’s conversations at the dinner table.”
“It doesn’t bother me at all,” I said.
“No,” Don said. “Hannah’s right. My dad would have slapped me off the chair for daring to interrupt him. His motto was that children should be seen at the dinner table and not heard. Keep quiet, son.”
“But dad—I just wanted to. . . .”
“That’s enough, Richie,” Hannah said. “Don’t speak until we’ve finished our dinner.”
When we finished dinner, I ordered coffee and Don and Hannah ordered cocktails.
“All right, son,” Don said to Richie. “What was so important that you wanted to butt into my conversation earlier?”
“Oh, it was nothing, Dad,” Richie said. “I wanted to tell you there was a bug in your soup but it’s gone now.”
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