Four Directions

I had taken my mother out to lunch at my favorite Chinese restaurant in hopes of putting her in a good mood, but it was a disaster.

When we met at the Four Seasons Restaurant, she eyed me with immediate disapproval. "Ai-ya! What's the matter with your hairs?" she said in Chinese.

"What do you mean, 'What's the matter,'" I said. "I had it cut." Mr. Rory had styled my hair differently this time, an asymmetrical blunt-line fringe that was shorter on the left side. It was fashionable, yet not radically so.

"Looks chopped off," she said, "You must ask for your money back."

I sighed. "Let's just have a nice lunch together, okay?"

She wore her tight-lipped, pinched-nose look as she scanned the menu, muttering, "Not too many good things, this menu." Then she tapped the waiter's arm, wiped the length of her chopsticks with her finger, and sniffed: "This greasy thing, do you expect me to eat with it?" She made a show of washing out her rice bowl with hot tea, and then warned other restaurant patrons seated near us to do

the same. She told the waiter to make sure the soup was very hot, and of course, it was by her tongue's expert estimate "not even lu kewarm ."

"You shouldn't get so upset," I said to my mother after she disputed a charge of two extra dollars because she had specified chrysanthemum tea, instead of the regular green tea . "Besides, unnecessary stress isn't good for your heart."

"Nothing is wrong with my heart," she huffed as she kept a disparaging eye on the waiter.

And she was right. Despite all the tension she places on herself - and others - the doctors have proclaimed that my mother, at age sixty-nine has the blood pressure of sixteen-year-old and the strength of a horse. And that's what she is. A Horse, born in 1918, destined to be obstinate and frank to the point of tactlessness. She and I make a bad combination, because I'm a Rabbit, born in 1951, supposedly sensitive, with tendencies toward being thin-skinned and skittery at the first sign of criticism.

After our miserable lunch, I gave up the idea that there would ever be a good time to tell her the news: that Rich Schields and I were getting married.

QUESTION: In "Four Directions," a mother and daughter are having lunch together and can't seem to get along. This would be considered an -

Group of answer choices

Internal Conflict- person vs self

External Conflict- person vs nature

External Conflict- person vs technology

External Conflict- person vs person