Alfredo, Caesar, and God

Two years ago, when he was 10, #2 son looked up from his banana bread one morning during a discussion of chapel attendance at his Episcopal private school and said, with a directness no one else in the family seems able to muster, "This god stuff is just stupid, there is no god." I didn't argue, since that's my opinion too, but neither did I rush out to buy him a Richard Dawkins book. If he joined his older brother in the kind of atheism that just wants to sleep in on Sunday morning, that was fine with me.

But then his older brother brought up Alfredo and Caesar.

He wanted to know why we didn't have Alfredo sauce in jars so that at a moment's notice he could have Alfredo chicken just the way they serve it in the school cafeteria. He wanted to know why we didn't have Caesar dressing in bottles so that at the drop of a hat he could have a chicken caesar just like the ones he eats in the school cafeteria.

"Because there is no such thing as Alfredo sauce," I said. "There's a famous dish called Fettuccine Alfredo, which is cream and butter and parmesan with a hint of freshly ground nutmeg tossed with fresh pasta. There's no such thing as Caesar dressing either. The famous dish called caesar salad is made with salt, garlic, Tabasco, dry mustard, oil, vinegar, a one-minute egg, anchovies, pepper, and parmesan tossed with romaine."

"If they don't exist, how come everyone else gets to have them?" he asked.