Fried Chicken

What a day…

As I stared at my screen, which displayed some JavaScript code that wasn’t doing what it was supposed to, I couldn’t help but wish the workday was over.

It’s fine.

I thought to myself as my function printed out several lines of response. Spoiler alert: it was only supposed to be one line. I rubbed my eyes, trying my best to dispel the frustration building inside me. The bad part about being a programmer is that, nine times out of ten, the best solution is to walk away for a few minutes. Unfortunately, it’s extremely difficult to walk away from an unsolved problem.

“You gonna be off on time?”

My wife cracked open the door, our youngest daughter, who had just turned 1, on her hip.

“Yep, should be. As long as I don’t off myself first.”

“Don’t do that! You’d miss fried chicken for dinner,” my wife said with a smirk.

It may seem trivial—I mean, come on, we’re both in our early thirties—but we just figured out how to make awesome fried chicken. Don’t get me wrong, we’d made fried chicken in the past, but just recently we really perfected it. The key steps were soaking the chicken in buttermilk and, our more recent discovery, squeezing the chicken while breading it so the breading really stuck after cooking.

“Couldn’t miss that, right?”

An “I love you” from my wife and a cheesy smile from a 1-year-old with six teeth later, and I was, unfortunately, back to work.

The afternoon flew by—unfortunately, not the good kind of “flew by.” It was almost five o’clock, and I was still having issues with my code.

“Sounds like a Monday problem to me,” I said out loud to my empty office.

I locked my computer, grabbed my water bottle, and called it a day. Well, I guess when you’re a parent, you never really call it a day. Work was done, but there were kids to be entertained and dinner to be had.

“Daddy!” my oldest daughter, who was almost four and a half, screamed as I walked into the dining room. Side note: damn, I’m old.

“Hey, sweetie.” I gave her a smile as I put down my water bottle.

“Are you all done workin’?”

“Yep!”

“YES!”

She was always super enthusiastic when I said I was done working. I appreciated it—it made me feel good. Nothing like a four-year-old to lift your spirits or, you know, crush them with their brutal honesty.

“This is for you.”

My wife passed me our less-than-enthused younger daughter. The second-born was supposed to be a daddy’s girl, but, of course, she loved her momma. My oldest was split, but when push came to shove, she chose momma too. It’s understandable, and I tried not to take it personally. After all, my wife was a stay-at-home mom, so aside from my oldest going to Pre-K, they spent all their time with her while I was at work.

Sometimes I thought about how other parents—or even my parents—did it. I work in the tech field, which has largely gone hybrid or remote. Since the pandemic, I’ve spent most of my time working from home. That means I can get cuddles or play a quick game whenever I want throughout the day. I honestly can’t imagine being away from my family for the entire day, five days a week. That just sounds awful.

Anyway. Fried chicken. Tonight’s dinner. Usually, I handled it after work, but today my wife wanted to give it a shot. I didn’t mind—it meant I got to spend some time with the kiddos. Per usual, my oldest was ready to go with a game she’d invented. I could only hope she explained the rules before we started. My youngest wasn’t convinced that momma was unavailable, so after squirming enough for me to put her down, she decided to spend some time babbling her baby language at the baby gate that kept her out of the kitchen.

“Need any help?” I asked, peeking into the kitchen.

“Nope!” my wife responded, flipping through her phone.

“You sure?”

“Yep.”

“‘Cause… doesn’t seem to be a lot of cooking happening.”

“Shut up! Out of my kitchen.”

She put her phone down and made a little shooing motion at me. My youngest must’ve thought Senpai finally noticed her and got excited enough to scream and shake the baby gate.

“C’mon, little girl, let’s play with your sister.” I tried to convince her to leave the gate. It didn’t work.

My eldest’s game of choice was ninjas. I should preface this by saying we recently got her into Naruto; specifically, the movies. She was Sakura, and I was supposed to be some sort of lava monster? I wasn’t sure. All I knew was she did hand movements, and I was supposed to fall over dead.

“How’s it look, handsome?” After some time, my wife asked, meaning I had permission to poke my head into the kitchen.

“Goddammit.”

“What?!”

My wife gave me her best quizzing look—a mix of wanting an answer and threatening me if I gave the wrong one.

“It looks perfect. It’s bullshit.”

My wife laughed, obviously pleased with herself and my reaction.

“Why is it bullshit? I did the same thing you usually do.”

“Yeah, but it looks ten times better than when I do it.”

“Well…” She gave an overdramatic hair flip. “I am pretty awesome.”

“Yeah, yeah. Guess I can’t make chicken anymore—it’s your job now.”

“No, no, no. Yours is good! I just wanted to do it today.”

“Well, now I can’t compete, so—”

“Shut up! Get out.”

And thus, I was once again banished from the kitchen. The funny thing about my wife is she likes to talk, especially to me, so even though she wanted me out of the kitchen she still wanted to talk to me. Which is great since my hearing is shit. I swear, this girl will be “talking” to me when I’m in another room and then wonder why I didn’t hear her.

“Are you going to make me bread?”

“Yeah, just gotta get the starter going. I took it out of the fridge yesterday. Fed it. I need to feed it again tonight. Maybe Sunday then?”

She gave me a pouty face to let me know she was not pleased with me not being able to produce a sourdough bread on the spot.

“Fine, I guess.”

“Maybe I should just let you do it.”

“Why? Bread making is your hobby.”

“Yeah, well you keep being better at me at cooking and baking so-”

“Oh shut up!”

“Might as well let you try sourdough.”

“Nooo, that’s your thing.”

“You just don’t want to make it, it be amazing, and then I give up on my hobby.”

“Exactly.”

She gave me a smirk. That damn smile is exactly why we have two rugrats running around.

“I want you to do it, it’s too much work for me.”

“Well you made tortillas work, so you might as well take over sourdough-”

“Oh my God! Shut up!”

If you need to know one thing about my wife and I’s relationship, it’s that “shut up” is actually a term of endearment. I mean, it’s pretty much on the same level as “I love you” at this point.

“I told you!” She pointed her tongs at me. “It’s the recipe. That’s the only reason why mine worked and yours didn’t.”

“Mhm.”

Truth be told, I was a little jealous. I had tried three or four times to make flour tortillas and failed spectacularly. My wife randomly found a recipe and knocked it out of the park on the first try. I mean, they did the little puff up thing while they were cooking and everything. Now she was frying chicken way better than I did. I liked making things that she and the girls liked. Like she said, baking had kind of become my hobby.

My jealousy didn’t last long, however, because much like the tortillas, as soon as I took a bite of the fried chicken my jealousy was replaced with absolute pleasure. It looked great and the chicken was super tender, so of course my oldest daughter said it was “ucky”.

“It’s amazing, good job.”

I gave my wife a kiss on the cheek as we all ate at the table. She smiled and did a little dance in her seat as she took a bite of chicken.

“I know.”