eating vietnamese food

The other night we made some vermicelli, with ground beef and cucumber and lettuce and fish sauce. It was delicious of course, and when I say we made it I mean Hyphen made it and I was his trusty and, according to him, messy sous chef. That dish is called bom, or at least that is what it sounds like to me. Annabelle calls it bom pasta. as we were eating Hyphen slurped it up. Now, Hyphen has the best table manners of anyone I have ever known , excepting my friend Carolyn. But he is kind of like Calpurnia in To Kill a Mockingbird, except that instead of having two ways of talking, he has two sets of table manners, American and Asian. Asians slurp and smack when they eat and it is okay to do so (it did take me a while to get used to this).

Now, Annabelle hasn't lived long enough to learn the finer points of cultural anthropology. She just knows one thing:

A: "Papa, you slurwped."

She laughed for a bit and then admonished him in a very serious tone. "We don't slurwp." Then she laughed some more and then she ate some bom and then she slurped. "I slurwp too. We don't slurwp." Then they were both laughing and slurping. I sighed and said "No, we don't slurp."

But, when in Texas, married to a Vietnamese man, eating bom on a hot summer night, do as the husband and daughter do.