October 16, 2021: Accept No Substitutes -

I worked in the dining halls during college, which meant I couldn’t go out for lacrosse.

(JOKE! I had never heard of lacrosse before freshman year, never met anyone who played lacrosse in prep school. One does not “go out” for lacrosse any more than one goes out for that Mongolian horseback sport where the ball is a human head. One is born into lacrosse, or into Mongolian sports society. [Let us pause at the very bottom of this digression and give thanks for living in our amazing era. We can type “Mongolian horseback sport human head” into a search bar, and a magic screen will return “buzkashi,” which, granted, involves placing a goat or calf carcass in a goal, not a human head, but still, we live in an age of riches, and we don’t pause to appreciate that enough. I don’t, at least.])

I worked in the dining halls during college. (Some People had lacrosse practice while I was in the dining halls, which made me snarky, but that’s another story.)

We were unionized, the pay was good, the hours were fine, but it was boring. I’d be standing behind the steam trays, Would you like any of this? And kids would say What IS that?, and I might say, “There’s raccoon, or possum today.” I mean, the menu was posted, and presumably they could read.

Then a new guy took over as head of dining services. The food was good before and after new guy. The food didn’t change. The menu changed, and by that I mean the actual menu. Where it had once said “Beef or bean burritos,” It now said, “Mexican Fiesta!” It wasn’t every meal, but way too often, things had cute names. Samoan Holiday!  What’s that? I’d furrow my brow and say, “Maybe …elk? What do YOU think?”

The high point was the day I was serving something called – I swear – Steamboat Medley. This gave me the once in a lifetime chance to answer with an eyebrow of exasperation and a gesture to the menu. What is that? It’s steamboat (you absolute moron).

The poetic naming convention waned, but in the middle of winter, we were surprised with 1918 Weekend, during which we ate what our forebears had eaten during their dread time of war and pandemic and shortages. (See, this IS going to tie in, someday, to our recent themes). They even posted a photocopy of the menu from 1918, all old-timey font and such.

I remember it as a festival of potatoes, cabbage, and gristle. There was no orange juice, but there was fake chicory coffee, among other travesties.

But WHY 1918 Weekend, you ask? No idea. It wasn’t an anniversary of 1918. There were many dark suppositions. Were the dining halls disguising a budget crisis, pretending it was a history lesson? Was someone mad at us, ungrateful kids? Was it all a ruse, a way to boycott orange juice and protest Anita Bryant’s homophobia? (Search bar time!)

The lacrosse team had such a fit that 1918 Weekend was a one-shot.

I had forgotten this whole story until I read that book about the Great Influenza, and until the recent reporting on our supply chain crisis and various shortages. I suddenly remembered a memoir I’d read, a woman reminiscing about her childhood during World War II. The only piece of it that stuck with me was her plaint about bananas.

Bananas disappeared. She was a little girl who loved bananas and mourned for them, and so occasionally somebody would try to cheer her with a concoction made with artificial banana flavoring. But artificial banana flavoring made her weep, because it wasn’t some pale imitation of real banana, it was Worse Than Nothing. It was a net negative. It MULTIPLIED her banana despair. Better to forget that the world had ever contained such things as bananas than to eat anything made with artificial banana flavoring.

So here’s the analogy. I know, lots of backstory to get here. But in my own pandemic adaptations, I was fine with Zoom yoga. It was a pale imitation, but it had some upsides, too, like turning off the video. I can fit a mat anywhere. Zoom yoga was a reasonable adaptation.

I was disappointed and gave up on streaming dance class: crappy audio, couldn’t move and see the teacher, nothing like dance.

But the thing I missed so much that it hurt was my choir. Absolutely nothing came close. Every substitute was a net negative, a brimming bowl of artificial banana flavoring, accompanied by cold chicory coffee. If I can’t be surrounded by other people singing with me, if I have to hear myself more than I hear them, if I can’t make eye contact with my pal after we nail a tricky passage, better to pretend choirs were never invented. Fake choir was Worse Than Nothing. So nothing was pretty much what I did.

But in November, barring something unforeseen, I will get to go back to choir. I am so looking forward to it.

So there you go. Long hike. But you made it to the end, so there’s a reward. Just in case this has been nagging at you, I tried again, and it wasn’t the Mongolians at all. It was, possibly, the Aztecs. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/meso-american-baseball Sorry. Wrong hemisphere. We live in a wonderful era.