Do we have to eat to entertain?

Do you feel obligated to feed anyone who comes to visit you at your house? When you're not having a party, didn't invite them, but they just stopped by. Maybe they called first...people don't just drop in like they did in the Olden Days when I was a child. Do you feed them?

When I was a child, people did just drop in. Mostly it would be Sunday afternoon, or just about any afternoon in the summertime. We didn't know they were coming, they just stopped by for a visit.

I know Mother always felt obligated to offer them something to drink. "Would you like some ice tea?" before they could sit down. If they said yes, or even said, "Could I just have some ice water?" Mother would go fix something to eat. If we had some cake or cookies, she would get out the glass dishes and serve them dessert. It often happened that there was nothing left of the cake or cookies, since there were so many of us children in the house, so she might send one of us out the back door to the corner store to find something to "serve."

And of course we were sometimes the ones dropping in. I remember my brother George would sometimes take me with him to visit his girlfriend Shirley. I was about 4 years old, so he would have been about 15. I never knew why he would ask me to come. It could have been any number of reasons.

1) He was too nervous to go alone.

2) He was using my cuteness factor to ensure that Shirley would let him in.

3) Shirley always served something if he brought me along.<<<<-------

Of course that was the reason I went along. Shirley always served Burry's Fudgetown cookies. She put a bunch on a plate and I could eat them all by myself without having to share with my sister Toni.

I tried to break the cycle of feeding the drop-in guest. Of course, these days people don't drop in unannounced the way we used to. We can stop in at the Goodberry's or Starbucks when we need an afternoon sugar fix.

P.S. George and Shirley recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.