The clock ticks away the minutes as I overwork diligently at my desk. It’s the same old story of too many tasks and not enough time to do them, but today I am strangely content.
It is Friday morning, a Friday morning in Lent, and Friday mornings in Lent are the prelude to, oh joy, Friday lunches in Lent. This is a Catholic school and so there will be no meat served in the cafeteria today.
Meat will be given up, a Lenten sacrifice.
But the children must be fed, of course, of course, so substitute sustenance must and will be prepared.
And this is New Orleans, yes, yes, yes, so Lenten lunches are, oh yes, special.
My lunchtime arrives and I hurry over to the cafeteria. The timing is perfect, ten minutes before the boys are released, and the is no cacophony of boys to fight my way past. I walk, pre-line, up to the display of edible offerings, my mouth already a-watering. There are spicy fish sandwiches, seafood gumbo, popcorn shrimp plates, and crab balls among other delicious offerings, all made in house under the supervision of Mr. Buntler, our cafeteria manager now, retired from managing a local Cajun restaurant. (School food service hours are better and the clientele never send food back.)
Oh, I do so look forward to Friday lunches in Lent because that’s when Mr. Buntler makes my absolute favourite, his special ingredient tuna wraps. I have no idea what’s in them or why I love them so much, but when the special tuna wraps appear, I buy two, one to eat and one to take home, they’re that good.
Now, I do see the irony of the situation. Catholics give up meat as a sacrifice in Lent and here we are, like many New Orleans institutions, replacing the sacrifice with something more desirable, but I’m not catholic and so the irony’s not something that’s going to worry me. I just love the daggone tuna wraps. (I wonder if any of the special ingredients are illegal. Maybe that’s the secret.)
I ignore all the other food and head for the wraps. My happy hand reaches out for my own slice of heaven when my eye notices the sign, “Shrimp Wraps,” it says above the only tray of paper enfolded food.
Shrimp wraps? Shrimp wraps!
“Mr. Buntler,” I call to the magician of culinary joy, barely able to contain my trepidation. “Mr. B! Where are the tuna wraps?”
He turns to me, shrugs his shoulders and says the fatal words,”You know, I thought I’d try something new.”
Noooooo!
Heavy, heavy, oh most heavy sigh.
I pick up a single shrimp wrap.
In other circumstances, it would be tasty, but it’s no special tuna wrap. It cannot live up to the long anticipation of the markedly more delicious tuna wrap.
I will eat it, yes,
but I won’t enjoy it.
And thus is the revelation thrust upon me.
Perhaps the Catholic Church I particulately don’t follow has found a way to force this wayward non-theist to observe the custom of Lenten sacrifice after all.
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