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| Fish sticks are the height of culinary sophistication! |
Sometimes
I just can’t resist telling a funny story, and this time is no exception. So there
it was 2002. I was 23 years old, and I was still living at home with my
parents. I was in the midst of doing my student teaching at a nearby elementary
school, which meant that, by the end of the week, I was extremely exhausted. My
wild Friday nights consisted of coming home, putting on my pajamas, eating
dinner in front of the tv, and then lounging in a half-awake state for the rest
of the evening until I fell asleep watching Monk
around 8:30 PM. This particular Friday night was no exception.
It was
spring, probably late March or early April, and I had fallen asleep early as usual. On this night, however, I woke up about an hour later, and I
was hungry. Not the, “Oh, I’ll just have a little snack” kind of hungry in
which you eat an apple or a few pretzels and you are satisfied. I was feeling the
“I will devour this entire Bloomin’ Onion all by myself” kind of hungry, which
meant that I needed to eat a lot, and it didn’t particularly need to be
healthy.
My mom,
who had also fallen asleep and had waken up came back to my room and noticed I
was awake. I mentioned how hungry I was to her, and she replied that she was
also quite hungry. We consulted with my younger brother, and he too happened to
be hungry. Our little trio poked around the kitchen and settled on fish sticks
and mozzarella sticks. I know! It doesn’t sound like a particularly delicious
late-night snack, but the three of us had just been discussing fish sticks a
few days earlier, and who doesn’t like mozzarella sticks? Shockingly, we
somehow happened to have both in the freezer. (I have no idea what my dad was
doing at this time, but we apparently didn’t care and didn’t include him in our
little appetizer party.)
We sat
in the kitchen, my mom and I groggy from having been asleep, and my brother
much more bright-eyed. I was clearly dressed to look my best, with an ensemble
consisting of navy blue and bright blue plaid pajama pants that were two sizes
too large, and a large navy blue Weezer concert t-shirt with odd pinkish stains
all around the collar from where my Proactiv Solution moisturizer had come into
contact with it. My hair was back in a messy ponytail, and smeared makeup
adorned my eyes because, clearly, I had been too lazy to actually take a shower
or remove my makeup before taking my nap. My mom was giving me a run for my
money in her pink-striped pajama pants, bright blue t-shirt, pink men’s oxford
shirt several sizes too large, and nice, green towel turban. My brother, the
most normal looking of the bunch, had on shorts and a t-shirt. And so our
motley crew waited for our delicious appetizers to be ready to come out of the
oven. We were all three sitting there in a trance when, suddenly, the doorbell
rang.
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| Potato chips go great with liquor and fish sticks! |
We
looked at the clock. It was about 10:15 PM. None of us was expecting company,
and it seemed too late for the Jehovah’s Witnesses to be out and about.
Worrying a bit that it might be some sort of family emergency, we all walked
into the living room. There was a young man standing in our living room wearing
jeans and a flannel shirt, and carrying a bottle of liquor and a bag of potato
chips. He had obviously heard that we were having appetizers and had decided to
come join the party. Now, who wouldn’t be delighted for a stranger to come to
their house bearing the gifts of alcohol and snack foods, I ask you? However,
instead of inviting him in to add his offerings to our late-night feast, we
just stared at him.
“Oh!”
he said loudly, comprehension dawning. “I must have the wrong house.” He looked
around the neat living room and repeated that he must be in the wrong house. He
said an address out loud, and asked us if we lived at that address. We told him
no, and he responded that it did look a little too neat in the living room to
be a house that was rented and shared by three male college students. We
suggested that perhaps the correct house was down the street, and he ran out,
embarrassed.
A
couple of minutes after he left, my mom and I walked out on the front porch and
looked around for the party. We knew that three male college students shared
the house next door, and, sure enough, the house was lit up like Kitty Dukakis with a bottle of rubbing alcohol. There were
masses of cars parked in the house’s driveway, and many more lining the
sides of the street. We had not noticed the party because we had been busy
sleeping , and then we had been busy getting excited about fish sticks. The air
was also thick with the smell of “concert.” (Whenever my brother smelled
marijuana, he said he smelled “concert.”) Next to the buzzing party house, our
little house looked like a quaint cottage from a BBC Miniseries.
So, the
question that remains to be answered is, why did this guy, after parking in
front of a house in which a party was obviously going on, then proceed, not to
the brightly-lit den of iniquity, but rather up the hill to the dark quiet
house with only one porch light turned on? We had many theories, one being that
he had already partaken of that which was causing it to smell like concert, and
another being that he was already really drunk. I, however, prefer the third
explanation—that the aroma of fish sticks and mozzarella sticks streaming out
of our kitchen was just too much to resist.
So, my
friends, if you ever decide to have your own late night appetizer party, be
very careful of which appetizer items you choose to cook. I recommend something
bland like Totino’s Pizza Rolls, or Hot Pockets. Just don’t choose anything as
deliciously fragrant as that which only the Gorton’s Fisherman can bring, or
you may be fending off waylaid partygoers late into the night!
Fish sticks image courtesy of http://www.gortons.com
Potato chips image courtesy of http://www.fritolay.com
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