For as long as I can remember, Thursday was pizza night at my dad’s house. On Fridays, our ritual was equal parts Viking, Persian, and American.

Regardless of the weather and if there wasn’t a home football or basketball game for our local high school a stone’s throw away, my dad would fire up the grill. Pork chops, steaks, chicken, you name it he’d grill it. Inside, on the stovetop, we always had a pot of rice—polo not kateh for those of you Iranians keeping tabs. And there was usually a salad of sorts or some greens and radishes. A melange of the traditions my dad had absorbed over his life in Iran and after he immigrated to the US.

“In those days, my house was like Grand Central Station for the neighborhood kids,” my dad has told me numerous times.

We would do our rippin’ and runnin’ around the neighborhood, but by dinner time we would all be back for whatever my dad was prepping on the grill. Most of our friends were regulars, so they understood the decorum. Which wasn’t much more than ‘try a little of everything, AS IS, if not Mo Daddy will find a way to squeeze it on your plate.’

“Aziz, just try a little bit, it won’t bite you. How about I put a small spoonful on your plate just in case you want to try it,” my dad would say. If it sounded rehearsed, it’s because it was.

Asking for condiments was a violation almost as grave as not wanting to try something unfamiliar. It was a corollary rookies would often violate. No matter how much we tried to stop or prepare them for the protocol, we’d inevitably fail. One such occasion came in my sophomore year of high school, one of my less experienced friends joined us for the usual Friday feast of grilled meats, rice (one bowl of plain rice, another bowl of rice with egg yolk), and salad.

We had all spent much of the time after school playing basketball. Needless to say, we were famished. The veterans and I had already scooped up our plates, piled them high with food, and took up our spots in front of the TV. Some were on the couch, some sat on the floor. All were busy scarfing down whatever was on our plates. Seconds were a must.

One of our friends, the rookie, despite our briefing preparing him for what was forthcoming, was a little slower. As he walked the ten steps into the living room from the kitchen, he mumbled something about soy sauce and turns around to go back to the impromptu buffet line.

“Hey Mo Daddy,” he says, starting to ask a question, as he returns to the kitchen. Mo Daddy was what my friends called my father.

“Yes, my handsome man,” responds my father. He was not sitting with us. Instead, he chose to sit in a nearby room, eating quietly like a monk, happy that his charges were supplied with all they needed.

We all knew what was about to happen and were powerless to stop it.

“Do you have any soy sauce?”

‘Shit,’ we all look at each other, thinking the same thing, ‘he’s gonna fuck this up.’

“My handsome son, do you not like my rice?”

“No, I don’t eat rice without soy sauce.”

“My rice isn’t just any rice, you don’t need soy sauce. Try the rice without it, son.” There was a slight increase in the tenor of his voice. For the initiated, we understood what it meant. My new friend, the rookie didn’t.

At this point, my dad has given my friend two opportunities to walk away without any repercussions. He failed to see the clear signs that the road to getting soy sauce for his rice was a dead end and he should start looking for ways to respectfully exit. For our part, we are powerless to stop the impending train wreck.

“I need the soy sauce.” We all instantly hang our heads in shame. Not for our friend, but because he neither heeded our warnings nor adjusted his behaviors and now there’s unnecessary tension with my Dad. Tension our friend wouldn’t understand he caused.

“SON! Eat the rice as it is, there is no soy sauce. If you don’t like it, then you can put it back.”

My dad’s contentment was destroyed by the crime of asking for soy sauce with Persian rice. Three millennia’s worth of culture was violated by a simple indiscretion. One that wouldn’t be soon forgotten, because it was something you neither did, nor insisted upon. The decorum was breached.

Finally, cognizant he would not win, my friend settled for adding some more butter and salt. When he sat down, we all looked at him as if he had committed high treason. What the fuck, dude!

All we could do was shake our heads and hope he does not make the same mistake twice—or at least brings his own soy sauce, even then he would be courting disaster. He never returned, though. Too burned from being checked Mo Daddy’s unwillingness to allow him soy sauce.