Everyone loves a conspiracy.
~Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code
My extended family has always put a high value on discussing things. Not so much the weather or snowfall, the family next door or sports scores, but conversations about stuff we are passionate about. After Sunday dinners, the great-aunts and great-uncles with assorted spouses discussed stuff around the dinner table for hours. There are no lawyers in my family, just folks who could, if pressed into service, discuss and argue either side of a point. I can’t say these were elegant or graceful conversations, but they were passionate and intense.
To my knowledge, there were only a couple of rules of engagement: no cursing or calling people names. Everyone got a chance to speak. They couldn’t interrupt when someone was talking, but knowing my kin, there might have been intermittent side conversations. Probably the most important rule was that when they got up from the table, the conversation was finished, and the debating was over. There was no holding grudges. Perhaps this is just common civility. But they all knew there would be another time to take up the same topic again.
Although none of these conversations, arguments or debates about politics or poverty, economics or religion, world affairs or taxes ever reached the ears of the Supreme Court or foreign leaders, I believe they affected the way my family has lived — how they viewed the world, as well as their personal integrity and spending habits.
As would be expected, these conversations continued into my generation among my siblings. My sister got the family heirloom — the table used for those first discussions — so the tradition continues. But I believe my brother has carried on the tradition with the most intensity.
As a kid, he would bring up topics that perplexed him, things like social justice, economic policy, why some places required us to collect taxes at our lemonade stand, why all religions didn’t get along, and why migrant children didn’t go to school. Much to my parents’ credit, they were able to provide a satisfactory conversation and answers for his questions.
However, my parents almost always got themselves in trouble when he brought up hot dog and bun issues. It is a conspiracy, he told them, and pressed for answers. One of the other siblings mentioned other mismatches of items: shampoo and conditioner, salt and pepper, peanut butter and jelly. There was a discussion about how the other items depended on consumer use and weren’t a deliberate fraud by any companies and manufacturers.
He was satisfied with the discussion — except for the hot dog and bun conspiracy. “The bakers know how many hot dogs are in a package, and the wiener makers know how many buns are in a package,” he told my parents. “There are children starving in China who could eat what we throw away because of this conspiracy.” The “children starving in China” line was one my parents used on us to get us to eat our vegetables, but now he was using it against them.
My mother didn’t give up. “There are lots of ways to look at that,” she told him. “You can do the math: buy two packages of wieners at twelve each and three packages of buns at eight each. That gives you twenty-four sets of buns and wieners that you can eat and put in the freezer what you don’t use. There is no waste.” Our family continued these assorted discussions all through our high-school years. Mom would throw in quotes from Shakespeare and Dickens with a sprinkling from Psalms and Proverbs just for another point of view.
What might seem to outsiders as generations of hot air has taken on a life of its own among my siblings. They work with homeless people and high school dropouts, developmentally disabled adults and physically challenged kids, as well as others who are marginalized or on the fringe of society. There are no answers to these great questions of the universe that are discussed by generations of my family, but there is great satisfaction in involvement.
But we try not to bring up the hot dog and bun conspiracy question because it seems like we still can’t do anything about it.
~Ela Oakland
