Did I tell you about the time my mum accidentally made peas for dinner?

We’re sitting down to the table, all three of us. Tri-tip sandwiches wrapped in aluminum foil await unveiling on our plates. The only serving dish on the table is vegetables. A weird medley of vegetables that up until that moment I would have bet good money against ever appearing on the menu in this house.

“I thought you don’t like peas,” I say. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement, said as I’m dishing out the mix of potatoes and peas that has found it’s way to our meal.

“I don’t.” My mum scoops out vegetables for herself.

“Then why are we having peas for dinner?” I ask as I unwrap my sandwich, warm from the oven.

“We’re not. These are green beans,” she says.

I look at her for a long moment. I look at my father. I look back at her. “I didn’t know that peas came from green beans.” It is so very hard to keep a straight face.

“They don’t.”

“Then where did the peas come from?” These were snowpeas in the bowl, seed pods still filled with peas. Some had escaped from their shells, scattering over the potatoes, a mesh of green and tan that appeals less and less.

“Those are green bean seeds, not peas,” she says confidently, spearing a pod and popping it into her mouth. She chews once. Twice. Forces herself to swallow. “These arn’t green beans, these are peas!”

I can’t hold it any any longer, and a laugh escapes, bubbling out of me, overflowing laughter.

A discussion ensues about how it is possible for sweetpeas to be mistaken for green beans–lumpy, misshapen greenbeans. And the only question not voiced, if only to spare further embarassment–how sweetpeas were purchased without ever noticing what they are.

Because I have never seen a vegetable mix sold at Costo containing potatoes and sweetpeas, nor would I have expected to. Which means each was bought separately, and combined after the fact into the bowl.

And how that seemed like a good idea, even when she thought it was potatoes and green beans, I have no idea.

– “Truth of My Youth,” Catalyst: New Found Glory