CHINA'S BIG CHILL

What is this shit?

This I'm thinking to myself, of course.  Just putting it out there in case I wasn't making myself clear that I'm totally just thinking that and not saying anything of the kind straight out in the open in a room with my future wife, my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law (RIP-since she's in the room but not actually IN the room, if you know what I mean, overlooking, as she is, this sweet little pre-nuptial scene from the cheap seats-i.e. as urn-bound ashes on the mantle next to the brass candlesticks and the framed photo of my future parents-in-law one of whom [the MIL] is actually present in the flesh, as previously indicated and with the FIL not present in the room or even in the state since he's still touring with Glenn Campbell's band, being one of the better steel guitar players in the southwest at a minimum) present.

I'm looking at china patterns, of course.  I don't know why that would be "of course" since you have no way of knowing what I'm looking at and yet somehow I assumed if you thought of a list of things that would get that kind of reaction out of me (i.e. "what is this shit?") right at the top of the list I bet you dollars to doughnuts would be china patterns.  Anyway, I'm looking at a catalog of them as it happens.  These are things, I should say at the outset, with which I am not familiar--china patterns I mean, of course.  Is anyone?  Familiar, I mean?  And when I say 'anyone' here I mean specifically any man?  And now you chime in the way you always do with a few examples right off the top of your head without having to take really any serious type time considering the question (which is an indication of just how stupid my statement is right?...given the examples contradicting my statement that are just cold leaping to the front of your mind and to the tip of your tongue even with just practically zero brain energy put into the question) of men in your experience who know all about china patterns - "take my Uncle Charlie" you might say and then regale me of how good old uncle C. just loves getting himself lost in the Dining & Entertainment department at Macy's blah blah blah...OK I get it...it's just me.

So I ask again.  What is this shit?

Does anyone entertain anymore?  Isn't it just Super Bowls and Final Fours and Oscar parties and BBQ's?  When am I going to need china?  Maybe that one time your Dad comes off the road and after the requisite decompression period, a few long soaks in a hot bath, a brief period detoxifying cold-turkey style off the cigarettes and Jack Daniels and Vaseline Intensive Care applied to his sore calloused fingers...and he sits down at the table, his face just dried out and leathered and hair pompadoured and greasy and your mother walking a little funny from sore privates presumably your Dad being a randy bugger but faithful nonetheless saving six weeks of lust up for your Mom post-tour, and so he sits there and saws away at your dried out Steak Diane - your favorite recipe - see?  I listen...and he drinks the lemonade and au gratin taters slurpin and sawin and sawin and slurpin...I'm not bitter --I love your Dad.  No, I do.  But point is does he need to eat off the china?