Lesson 3: Table Etiquette Is Essential
Two strikes in the same morning did not deter Yuan Shao from his quest to create model figures of his house-guests for the reader's own reference for future endeavors.
The scene now turns toward the dining hall of the mansion. The long eating table was decorated and set beautifully by Zhang He himself. At the head sat Yuan Shao, while the rest of the occupants were seated all around him.
"Welcome back, fellow person of interest in the art of etiquette. We continue our turbulent lesson with something simpler that even the common commoner would understand: table manners. Now, as you can see, we have a…" Yuan Shao began to speak, only to be interrupted by someone.
"Food, food! Bring out the grub already I'm starving!" Dong Zhuo clamors, banging the table impatiently with his fists.
"Oh shut up, fat-face! You shouldn't be eating so much; you need to go on a diet!" Xiao Qiao snaps back at him.
"Silence! I will not have any more rudeness in the presence of our readers!" Yuan Shao says firmly to both of them. "Ahem…as I was saying, as you see we have a perfect placement of forks, spoons, and knives at each place-setting. It will be the job of each one here to identify the name of each utensil correctly before they can begin eating," he explains.
"Forks…knives…what the hell kind of eating tools are these? Where's the chopsticks and why are we using them?" Sima Shi questions, holding his spoon upside down and backwards trying to figure it out.
"Because only real cultured citizens of society use fancy silverware, unlike the peasant," Yuan Shao responds. "Anywho, today we will start this exercise with two hand-picked volunteers to start this demonstration: Cao Pi and Zhong Hui. Now, I presume both of you read the practice book I gave you both the night before?"
"Wait…you mean that encyclopedia-sized tome was the instruction book? I used that as fireplace kindle," Zhong Hui responds.
"And I fed mines to my horse…" Cao Pi responds.
Yuan Shao had a rather shocked-annoyed look on his face at the responses.
"Well, no matter, just wing it for now you two, we'll correct you on the way so you will know it," Yuan Shao says. "Capo Pi, show us all the Soup Spoon."
Cao Pi looks down at the hundreds of silverware before him and picks up one at random, which wasn't the correct one.
"You imbecile, that's the caviar spoon! Don't you know anything?" Zhong Hui says in his usual snarky voice.
"Shut it before I shove this thing up your no-ass self!" Cao Pi grumbles.
"I beg your pardon you Wei barbarian? If you knew what you were doing, then you'd know that the Soup spoon was this one," Zhong Hui says, picking up the wrong one himself.
"Ha! That's the ice-cream spoon! I always knew you Jin Dynasty hacks were all morons. Why even bother?" Cao Pi says smugly.
"Um…gentlemen…? Maybe it would be more considerate if we kept the language down to a minimum?" Liu Shan speaks softly, trying to intervene as mediator.
"You stay out of this you fur-coat-wearing cupcake!" both men shoot back simultaneously.
"Hey, don't you dare call my son names you two!" Liu Bei says, standing up from his seat.
"Oh look, daddy's gonna save the say day again. What a bunch of softies, my left boot-strap has more girth than you Shu shmucks," Xiahou Dun comments to them aloud.
"ENOUGH!"
The whole room falls silent as Yuan Shao loses his temper.
"THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE DISGRACE! IT'S OBVIOUS THAT ALL OF YOU CAN'T EVEN LEARN THE BASICS IN A CIVILIZED MANNER! EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY I AM QUITTING, YOU TACTLESS NEANDERTHALS!" Yuan Shao yells at them before storming out of the dining hall.
The whole room remained silent as everyone looked at each other in confusion.
"I'm still damn hungry you know!" Dong Zhuo spoke up despite what was said to them.
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