Shut up and eat your lasagna!

My little sister is telling me about this guy she met and he sounds wonderful. Nice, respectable Italian boy who is apparently smokin' hot (her kind of hot, not mine.) She's telling me all about him - I get to meet him next week! - and I'm nodding along appropriately, making all the big sister noises that I make, the uh-huhs and the oh yeahs and the wows and then all of a sudden she says something along the lines of "and then he said he loves to cook and I said, me too and..." I bring the conversation to a screeching halt.

"What did you say?"

"I said, me too."

"Oh no, you didn't. Tell me you didn't."

"Why not? I mean, I do and..."

At this point, I put down my wooden spoon, because ironically enough, I was cooking, and I get that very serious look that says we need to have a woman-to-woman sister-to-sister vagina-to-vagina talk. Sweetheart, I say, you need to call this boy up and tell him you didn't mean to say that. You need to issue a retraction and TAKE THAT BACK. Tell him you had a fever, tell him that you were just being polite, tell him that it was the devil talkin', tell him that you had a momentary lapse in good judgment and you have now come to your senses! Because if the divine being gives you a smokin' hot man who likes to cook, who the hell are you to shit all over it? You don't like to cook. You don't know how to cook. You can't even tell the difference between frisee and a flambe.

Sidenote: My sister really doesn't know the difference between frisee and a flambe. She's a good cook, but she's not a culinary artist by any stretch of the imagination. If A loved to cook, if it was a source of joy for her, a hobby that she reveled in, and she had all these cookbooks and all these fancy pots and pans, then I would not being giving this kind of advice. But no, A likes to cook the way most of us like to drive.

Anyway, I remind her that she's working two jobs and that in a couple of short weeks, she is going to start nursing school. And here is a man who not only knows his way around a kitchen, but looks good doing it and most importantly enjoys it, and she is going to throw that away?!? Women all around the world would give their left kidney to be in her shoes and what is she thinking?!? I remind her that if things go well and this turns out to be long-term, she is going to have plenty of responsibilities in the relationship (like making babies, for example, which turns out is A LOT OF WORK!) and that if this is one battle that is already won, then she should fill her mouth with whatever deliciousness her own personal Emeril wants to make for her and keep it shut.

And all of a sudden, I realize that I sound like my mother. That I was, in a way, encouraging my sister to be deceptive and a bit manipulative. And I thought, wow, my mom is a really smart woman.