Anyhoo .... KARI'S BLOG: Caramel brownies and the power of rationalization

I’m sitting at my dining room table eating a caramel brownie after another less-than-successful family dinner. I’m pondering how it happened that I was raised by a man who just revealed he wouldn’t hire a black man. Or a person with tattoos. Or a person with gigantic holes in their ear lobes.

This same man who taught me to never judge a book by its cover and it’s what’s inside that counts brought my dining room to silence. We were dumbstruck not because he would shun the above three potentially employable groups – though that’s bad enough – but his rationalization was worryingly creative. He would eliminate these groups from the hiring pool so that others would not be uncomfortable – a noble gesture indeed. After all, who wants to be in a hospital and have some tattooed loopy lobed attendant coming at you? Or be forced to order your coffee from some punk with a dragon tattoo?

Yup, he was only thinking of others. I’ll say it again, powerful rationalization. On the plus side I noticed he managed to silence my uncle, a visiting guest who I suspected I may never see again after dessert, but also suspected I might be able to live with that.

I picked up another caramel brownie and again contemplated what happened to my dad when he stepped over the 80-year-old line and would I suffer the same luck? His skin got thinner, age spots multiplied, eyes runnier and the only thing that matters now in a pair of shoes is comfort. Of course I love the son of a gun, but the opinions – that perhaps he has guarded all his life - now fall from his mouth as if he leaned his head too far forward and they tipped out over his dentures like a waterfall.

As I lick the sticky caramel off each fingertip I consider all the stuff I’ve been so politically correct about – that in 25 years is all going to spill over my own dentures. I’m probably going to silence a room with it all and I may never be invited to dinner anywhere good ever again.

I’m eating the next caramel brownie with a smile on my face though, because in 25 years, when I have that fated dinner conversation, no one’s going to notice the button on my pants is undone and I’m on my fourth brownie. Bonus. Sure, my dad may have discriminatory tendencies, but I still managed to learn not to judge a book by its cover. Okay, maybe I learned it from Oprah instead of my old man but there is something I have become skilled at because of him and it’s obvious to me now. With all my sweet contemplations over this last half hour I realize I have inherited the power of rationalization. And it’s gotten me through many a caramel brownie.

Kari Green is an Oakville blogger with an interest in travel, film and food. Maybe less travel, more film and food. Maybe less film and more food. Maybe just pizza.