We had a hoot at dinner tonight. Most of the boys have tried using chopsticks before (it’s part of their family heritage, after all), but only No. 2 has really mastered the technique. They had beef lo mein for dinner (no recipe to share, sorry – it came from the frozen section … Yours Truly had leftover grilled fish & green beans), and I taught them one of the few sentences that I can still remember how to say in Chinese: I want chopsticks. Wo yao kuaizi. I offered them a pair of chopsticks to use if they asked me for them in Chinese. :p

 

Everyone was a good sport, but it’s funny to see how their individual personalities surface even in a silly task like using chopsticks.

• No. 2, of course, was more than happy to show off demonstrate the proper use of chopsticks. He is very competitive by nature, so this didn’t surprise me.
• No. 3 lives on No. 2’s heels, always wanting to be in the same place, do the same thing, get the same privileges, etc. He would have sat there until his food got cold, because, by golly, he was going to figure it out! He did get the hang of it after a while, and he beamed with pride.
• No. 1, Mr. Independent, tried a couple of times to use the chopsticks, but he opted for a fork because it proved to be the best medium to shovel copious amounts of food into his mouth in the least amount of time. (His appetite now makes me cringe to think of what all five of them will be like as teenagers!)
• No. 4 pouted when his food fell between his chopsticks, so he resorted to poking/stabbing the food and being generally silly until I suggested that he eat with a fork. The desire to eat won out over any desire to achieve. :p
• No. 5 does not seem to have quite the same competitive streak as Nos. 2 & 3, but he definitely wants to hold his own. He also wants attention, so when he figured out how to do it, boy, the whole room knew! LOL

 

Dad demonstrated how to hold the chopsticks, and although he’s explained it before, I thought it was particularly helpful this time because he described it in ways they could really understand:

1. Make a Spock sign with your hand.
2. Rest one chopstick between your fingers (where the Spock sign splits … or the Mork from Ork sign, if you aren’t a Trekie), and let the other end rest in the crook of your thumb.
3. Hold the other chopstick like a pencil.
4. Use your pointer finger to squeeze the “pencil” chopstick but hold the other one still.

He had their rapt attention at “Spock sign.”

 

Not to be outdone (they did inherit their competitive streak from somewhere!), I had to brag a little and show them that I could eat salad with my chopsticks. Teeheehee.