Confess: We have ways of making you talk

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Who did it? Was it YOU?

Who did it? Was it YOU?

I have been a Pecora Nera (Pecora Nera is a black sheep, for you non-Italian speakers Ha!) for as long as I can remember. I dreaded the days when my mum would angrily shout my brothers’ and sister’s name one after the other, until she finally got her act together and settle on my name. I have found myself in some sort of trouble for most of my 52 21 years.

A classic example was the Ritz Crackers episode.

Another food item I love

These crackers got me into a lot of trouble.

There was an unspoken rule in our house. No one was allowed to open a pack of biscuits or Ritz crackers unless my mum had either: a) said we could open them or b) she had already opened them. If the pack was already open, then to a certain extent we could grab a handful and hide in the bedroom eating them eat one or two of them, providing we left more than crumbs in the box. No one ever dared to finish a box of crackers, the consequences were quite severe. My mum would say “Peter, go and make me a cup of tea and fetch the Ritz Crackers”. She knew they had been scoffed, I knew I had scoffed them, we both knew I was in trouble.

One evening, when I went foraging for food, I found to my dismay, that the box of crackers was unopened. But as I moved it to see what delights were hidden behind it (maybe an opened packet of chocolate digestives),  I noticed that this particular box of Ritz Crackers didn’t feel very heavy. It should have weighed 225 grams but it felt as though it was missing two or three crackers.

I investigated further and to my horror, shock and amazement, the box had very cleverly been opened from the bottom. A quarter of the pack had been eaten and the box carefully resealed. I knew for sure my brothers and my sister were not stupid brave enough to pull a stunt like that, which left only my mum.

I vividly remember the evening, when my mum decided to eat the Ritz that she has secretly opened and there were only three and a half  crackers left and three innocent children plus one suspicious looking black sheep.

Ok so this post is really about one of you out there in bloggo land who needs to confess to a deed most foul. One of you filled out a form on the Italy Magazine. com and nominated my blog of madness for Best Living in Italy Blog.

Cool

Cool

I know it was one of you lot, because I have interrogate Mrs Sensible and she denies it. Scooby Doo is not ‘yet’ allowed in the house, (Mrs Sensible keeps dropping hints, and the hints will get big when the snow comes) so he is not guilty which leaves one of you.

Out in the cold and the rain

Out in the cold and the rain

It wasn’t me, I only found out because I am a stataholic and I followed a referrers link back to the awards.  Who ever did it,

THANK YOU VERY MUCH

Merry Christmas

109 thoughts on “Confess: We have ways of making you talk”

  2. Umm, I wonder if it was me? It was a while (and a few glasses of wine) ago. You deserve an award, and Mrs Sensible deserves a medal, perhaps. (I can’t find a guilty emoticon.)

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  3. Guilty ha ha
    and my Mum once had a bet with my brother that she wouldn’t eat the huge box of Ferarro Roche that he gave her for Christmas so she carefully opened them and filled the ones she ate with cotton balls, wrapped them back up and got away with it for about six months lol xx
    Buon Natale to you and the Mrs xxx

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    • It would be nice to win, but there are some great blogs nominated ie The dangerously truthful diary of a Sicilian, or My Sardinian life or even Renovating Italy, the list is huge.

      But it was a nice feeling to be nominated 🙂

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  7. The Ritz crackers story brought back childhood memories for me – we were not allowed to open new packets either, or help ourselves to anything more than a couple of biscuits. Even now I find it difficult to eat more than one chocolate digestive at a time, so ingrained in us was the fact that to have more than one would be greedy. I’m practising though, and getting better at it with each year that passes… 🙂

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  8. yay, congrats on the nomination, that’s very cool. and to your mother on the ritz caper. okay, yes, i did the chocolate mint girl scout cookie straight from the box in the freezer, where they were put so we wouldn’t eat them!

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    • lol…..

      My mum hid the nut crackers one Christmas, so I used one of the legs of my bed, I lifted the corner of the bed, quickly slide a nut under the leg and then let go. BLAM one nut shattered to smithereens, which was pretty cool until my mum hoovered the bedroom carpet and heard all the little bits of shells disappearing up the hoover .

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    • Are you kidding me?

      Mrs Sensible and I fight over who gets to sit where on the sofa.
      If I let Scooby into the house he will lay on my sofa and I know, that if I kick him off, he will wander off and leave me one of his warm squidgy presents in one of my shoes.

      You may not believe me, but after Scooby decided to take up residence in my garage, he wandered back across the road to his house, their big dog started barking at Scooby through the fence, so Scooby lifted his leg and peed on the dog. This is no ordinary cat

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  13. Innanzi tutto FELICITAZIONI Pecora Nera! bravo!
    And then:
    Will I be the only mother who pens in here a ‘defense of mothers’ ?
    in any case those tricky mothers mentioned in the comments were doing it all ‘for your own good’ – don’t you know it now ? building impulse control and a healthy mistrust of even your closest family, not to mention how to out-fox any situation …

    When, as young woman from Italy I married an even younger American boy from Texas (in Texas they are not Yankees, you know ! ) and I came to this country, his sweet mother taught me how to make American pies and cookies. I soon became quite proficient. And when a few years later I had three children and was a stay-at-home mom I baked a batch of cookies everyday for my children who came home from school to find them still warm from the oven and spread out on the kitchen table. There were no rules about how many they could have with milk or not. I just put the cookies away (what was left) when my time to cook dinner arrived. Ritz crackers did not figure among delicacies to go after or protect, if we even bought them, they often became stale and I would throw them out. In addition I baked a rich American pie two or three times per week. It got so bad that the Texan complained if he had to eat ‘store-bought’ cookies ! Yet my children, now grown, do not even remember their mid-afternoon cookie feasts; those days instead are among my sweetest memories … (maybe also because any cookie that was not PERFECT in form and look I ATE MYSELF as I took the batches out of the oven…?? ) … So I put this comment in here to demonstrate that there were mothers who did not hoard the Ritzes but willingly gave splendid cookies free for the taking to their children… and I was not the only one either. It was different on this sides of the Atlantic in the good old days. Sigh… I think I am leaving this computer now and go bake an American pie…
    BTW: I’ll speak another time about the ‘plastic imitations’ of ham and cheeses that they sell here in the U.S. of A.

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  14. Congratulations on the nomination! That is great…and very much deserved! Your blog is VERY entertaining!

    Your stories sound very much like my husband’s growing up…and you’re about the same age, so you’ll be happy to know, that whether you grew up in the UK or the USA, boys will be boys 😉 I think he’s a bit of the Pecora Nera in his family, too, but his was probably well deserved 😉 Once he ate the last of his little brother’s Ho Ho’s and instead of just fessing up to it, he led his poor brother on a scavenger hunt around the entire house with the reward of finding the ho ho at the end…but when the end came, he left a note that he was so hungry after making the scavenger hunt, that he had to eat that last ho ho! Poor little brother…See??? Title well deserved, don’t you think?

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  17. Hi PN 😀 By the time I waded through “ho-hos” and “American Pie”, as usual I have totally lost the plot. Something about dining at the Ritz and confessions most fowl. If you need a scapegoat, it was me. I confess !! I did it !!
    And I agree with Mrs Sensible…… get that cat indoors !!
    Ralph 😀

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  19. PN, I love your Ritz story. My parents hid their Turtle candy (chocolate covered caramel and pecans) in the bottom of Dad’s sock drawer. Like I wouldn’t think of looking there. I slowly ate the bumps off the edges. The turtle lost their head and legs and resembled empty turtle shells. This story will be featured in a future post of mine.

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  21. O.K. – I admit it.

    It was me !

    Now, if you could just see your way to sending a mere £10 in my direction in recognition of my altruistic act, I would be be very appreciative 😆

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  24. Count my vote too! You, Mrs. Sensible and Scooby Doo have brought me laughter since I discovered your blog. I put a link to the Great Cat and Dog Chase on my blog.
    Happy New Year to Pecora Nera, Mrs. Sensible and Scooby Doo…who I am predicting will wheedle his way further into your heart and therefore…into your home…in 2014.
    Michelle

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  26. congrats on the nomination, great Ritz story (sounds familiar to what I used to do….)
    If it was me nominating you (which I don’t recall) I would have to say 10 Ave Marias, 10 Padre Nostro and sing “I will survive…”… ahahahahah LOL happy New Year PN to you and Mrs Sensible

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  27. 60 years ago on Staten Island NY the old Sicilian women beat us with the huge wooden salad spoon to make us confess and talk. Then they would beat us with the big spoon to make us shut up.They beat us to make us stop crying(?) , beat us to make the evil spirits go away when sick and hit us with the spoon because children need to be hit every now and then, even for no reason. I never saw any of them use the big wooden salad spoon for salad.

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  28. Pingback: Fellow Blogger – Pecora Nera from an Englishman in Italy | It Goes On

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