Putting The “Dump” In “Dumpling”

This is a favorite family story that has often been retold over the years.

My grandma and her sister are invited to lunch with some acquaintances who they’re looking forward to getting to know better. They meet at a dim sum restaurant and are seated at a large round table. 

The meal is served family-style, and the table has one of those Lazy Susan things that spin around in the middle, so each person can take some food from each dish and put it onto their own small personal plate in front of them. 

My grandma and her sister are not super familiar with this type of food or style of sharing, but my grandma is always happy to try new things. Her sister, on the other hand, is a lot more reserved and finds that some of the food is really not to her taste. She puts one particular kind of dumpling into her mouth and is so disgusted that she can’t help but gag and spit it out. But, being a rather proper lady, she somehow manages to do this extremely quietly and discreetly so no one notices (except my grandma next to her). She places the chewed dumpling onto an empty plate and moves it to the side so she can try to forget about it and enjoy the rest of the meal. 

Just then, someone spins the lazy Susan, and my grandma realizes that her sister has not put the chewed dumpling onto her personal plate but back onto a shared platter! Without missing a beat in the conversation, the woman on her other side reaches down with her chopsticks, absent-mindedly grabs the chewed dumpling, and pops it into her mouth! 

My grandma and her sister share a look of horror, but no one else at the table notices anything amiss, so they decide to go along with it and pretend nothing happened. It’s all they can do to stay quiet through the rest of the meal, and as soon as they say goodbye to the others, they absolutely fall apart laughing!

As far as I know, my grandma’s sister was too embarrassed to ever go out with that group again, and, like any true sister, my grandma never let her live it down!