"jmcquown" > wrote in message
...
> It doesn't really matter why things have changed, does it? Fact is, they
> have. This *isn't* the 1950's. IMHO it's rude to show up unannounced
> (*especially* around dinner time). I don't consider people like that
> "guests".

When I was a kid, we often had people show up at dinner time. Sometimes it
was kids but often it was some family that my parents knew in the past or
even some distant relative from another state. If it was a kid, my mom
would often just send them home, telling them to come back another time.
Once in a while she would ask them to stay. The others she would ask to
stay. She also had a very annoying friend who not only showed up then but
insisted on doing the cooking. The bad thing was that this woman was a
horrible cook! We were all quite relieved when she decided to become a nun.
I just hope they didn't put her to work in the kitchen. Or if they did,
hopefully they trained her.

When we lived in CA, I used to wind up cooking dinner for several other
kids. But the dads actually kind of asked if I would do it because the
wives weren't home for whatever reason. It wasn't a big deal to cook extra
and as such I always kept extra food in the house. Once in a while they
would take Angela out to eat so I guess it all worked out. Both of the dads
had issues that I won't get into here, so I just helped them out.

When we lived in NY, kids always showed up when we got a Chinese food
delivery because they knew that I was ordering teriyaki chicken sticks. The
kids all loved those. So I would wind up ordered a dozen or so. Then the
parents got wind of what the kids had been doing and told me that I didn't
need to be feeding their kids! But other than that, I've only had kids show
up as isolated incidents. Perhaps some emergency occurred at dinner time
and the parent asked if I could watch the kid and feed him or her dinner or
something like that. We've not had an entire family show up and expect to
be fed like what happened when I was a kid.