The Frozen Chicken Story

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Before we start, for the Americans who may worry about ableism, “hopping mad” is a British term that means furious. It’s not an ableist slur.

So, at the tender age of 21, I was living in a flat with my then-boyfriend, Kevin, and a flatmate called Anna.

I had fallen deeply in love with the internet, and therefore I was the one paying for the phone line there. I did own a landline phone, but I rarely plugged it in, because these are the days of dial up, and only the middle classes could afford one of those double-adaptors that go in your phone line socket. And only the super-rich could afford cable.

The computer was on the floor, next to our mattress, which was also on the floor. We used a box as a bedside table, and a hardbacked book as a mouse mat.

Given that we were broke, and Kevin hadn’t started drinking an entire bottle of scotch or vodka every night yet, we would come home and faff around on the internet. It was quite polite back then. We’d take turns. I’d catch up on my emails and read all the fanfic that came through on those lists, and then I’d pass the keyboard and mouse over to him, and he’d do whatever he did.

We didn’t sleep. I was an insomniac. He was an alcoholic, which meant he was awake until he passed out. So it wasn’t uncommon for us to stay up into the wee hours of the night/morning, especially on the weekend.

So imagine my surprise when around 1am one night, there was a sudden braying on the door, super-aggressive.

“Ignore it,” Kevin said, accidentally foretelling an event about a year into our future. “It’s just some drunk.”

So I did. But Anna, the flatmate, did not. I heard her open the door, and then make a noise of surprise, and then there were pounding feet down the hallway. My door was flung open, my mother stood there, absolutely boiling with rage. She threw a pack of four frozen chicken drumsticks at my head and stormed out, slamming our front door behind her.

And now the context, some of which I got from my late stepfather, some I pieced together logically.

Mum had phoned me at work, just for a chat. Because, y’know, it’s just my job. It’s not a real priority, and therefore I needed to drop everything to talk to her. And in that chat, she asked me what we were having for dinner. And I had replied something along the lines of, “I dunno. Beans on toast, for all I know.” Meaning: I haven’t thought about it, it’s not a priority, and I don’t care. Also, my mother raised me – or, y’know, she provided the house I grew up in – she knows I grew up on beans on toast, and have no beef eating it for dinner.

That had started my mother’s brain spiralling. She took this as me asking for help because I’m too poor to afford dinner. Which is interesting, because she threw many tantrums because we didn’t have tea, sugar and milk to make her a cup of tea, because we didn’t drink it, therefore we didn’t waste money on buying it on the off-chance Mother appeared without warning.

Mother decides that she has some frozen chicken and she will call me after work to see if I want it.

Of course, I get home, Kevin’s tying up the phone line while I make dinner, and then I tie up the phone line afterwards, both on the internet. And we stay on the internet, until a hopping mad woman drives three miles across town to throw frozen chicken at my head.

So Mother keeps dialling and dialling and dialling and only getting the busy signal. She works herself up into a foul temper, how dare I be using the phone line when she is trying to call me to do me a favour? How dare I choose to reject her superior mothering skills? How dare I do a thing that I was perfectly entitled to do, as the owner of the computer and the phone line? How dare I heartlessly reject her frozen chicken when she is the one thing standing between me and Kevin dying of starvation right now?

She dials from 5pm to 1am, getting more and more furious, and by now, it’s no longer about chicken. I mean, that would just be silly. What kind of unhinged thinking leads to dropping frozen chicken off at someone’s house at 1am for dinner?

Now it is all about what a terrible daughter I am, how I have rejected her, how I cannot be trusted, and what a disappointment I am.

So she drives three miles across town, pushes open the door when Anna opens it, shoves Anna out of the way, storms down the hallway, throws open my bedroom door without knocking, and hurls frozen chicken at her 21 year old daughter and her boyfriend, then leaves in a boiling rage.

Perfectly fucking normal.