Catholic Kids and Meatless Fridays.

Mickey Fitzpatrick: Why are you getting so upset Dad? You don't even believe in God.”

-Mr. Fitzpatrick: That doesn't mean I'm going to stop being a good Catholic!!!”

~From the movie, “She’s the one.”

Things are a little more lax today when it comes to church. Especially for Catholics. When I was a VERY young child, the original masses were in Latin. And that wasn’t even the end of it. You had to put on this monkey suit on Sundays and it was hot and unpleasant and stiff.

A couple of years ago, I went to mass for the first time in a very long while. The kids were wearing tank tops and hoodies.



They will never know the pain of those monkey suits.

One other pain was going without meat on Fridays during Lent. 40 days of meatless Fridays. Yes, that was a thing. And for the Catholics before my time, going without meat on ALL Fridays was a thing.

Seriously, you had to pick FRIDAY (Vatican) guys?

Now many people today might not think this is a big deal. Half the people I know don’t eat meat these days. But it’s important to put this in its historical context. There weren’t exactly vegan restaurant options back in those days. EVERYTHING had meat in it. And, as if the red meat wasn’t enough, there were smoking sections right in the restaurant where you could have your food with the added bonus of some old sea-hag blowing the smoke from her Virginia Slims right in your face.

But overall, we did alright. Kids were a lot thinner than they are now. Most of the water we drank came straight from the hose. You used to have to let it run for a second or you were mostly just drinking straight rust.



But like I say, we managed.

At first, I liked Fridays, because it meant we could go to one of my favorite places in town called “Skippers.” Everything there was fried. Even if it had no business being anywhere near a deep fryer, they threw it in there anyway. As an added bonus, they had all you can eat fish and chips on Fridays, which, as a growing boy, was right up my alley.

 

Until that fateful day.

I should have mentioned, you could also get clam chowder with your fish and chips as an ad-on, which I always did. That stuff was like liquid gold. Miraculously, there are still a few Skipper’s locations scattered around the Pacific Northwest, and when I visit I will often go hundreds of miles out of my way to procure some.

But I digress, back to the story.



On this day, a woman I considered my personal nemesis was working the clam chowder kettle. She was in her fifties and LOOKED like she came straight from the sea. She had large jowls and a permanent scowl on her face that never changed. She frowned upon young scalawags like myself who took advantage of the all you can eat process, and she let out a long sigh every time I came back for more.



But really it was her arms that were her most distinguishing feature. They hung loose and low beneath her uniform sleeves, and there was at least a foot of skin that hung beneath the bone.

Do you see where this is going?


Anyway, on this fateful day, I looked up as she was ladling my clam chowder and saw that this loose skin on her arm was now resting directly in my bowl. I’ll never really know if she did it on purpose. Could she be that crazy? To scald herself with piping hot soup just to win a war with a 10-year-old kid over all you can eat refills?

I certainly thought so.

I’ve never been able to get that image out of my mind. I certainly could never eat at that particular Skippers again.



So we took the show on the road to McDonalds. But not “happy” McDonalds with Big Macs and cheeseburgers. Sad McDonalds. Filet-o-Fish McDonalds.

I really came to dread Lent after that. One time my mother (she still denies this) let the dog eat a cheeseburger in front of me while I suffered with the Filet-O-Fish in the back seat. Sometimes she would even cook frozen fish sticks, which were even worse. And, going to Catholic school, it’s not like you got a respite at lunch either. Nope. The lunch ladies were in on it too. Nothing but bad fried fish and bad attitudes from them as well.

It had been 30 years since I had a Filet-O-Fish, and, of all people, Donald Trump made me reconsider. He kept calling it the “fish delight” on TV and talking about how great it was. I figured if a guy that rich with that many personal chefs liked it, that maybe I missed something as a kid. Maybe I was just being spiteful. Defiant. A little shit.

So I went through the drive-thru and ordered one.

Nope. Still hot garbage.

May God have mercy on me for denigrating meatless Fridays.

You can’t see me, but I’m making the sign of the cross.

SPECTACLES, TESTICLES, WALLET, AND WATCH.

The Catholic kids will know what that means.