Fish Fry Part Deux: Lovely Rita Fish Fry Maid

You are now aware of my nun fetish and my romantic notions of cloistered sisterhood; and have probably guessed that this goes hand-in-hand with a love of pre-Raphaelite painting and other idyllic relics from the days of yore. I can't help it, and furthermore, I won't apologize. No. We all have our vices.

But back to the Fish Fry. What actually occurs at a fish fry? Who goes and why? I can only speak for myself, of course. I was convinced by the village nun, Sister Carol, who perhaps sensed that I was vulnerable to nunified coercion and easily dazzled by diminutive virgins. Christ brides have to be able to tap into that sort of thing.

And so I committed to the task on a Wednesday. I was in a good mood when the good sister called, and since I have never been able to see beyond the present, it never occurred to me that Friday would arrive and I would be expected to make good on a promise. A promise made is a debt unpaid, as Robert Service warned us.

On the Friday in question, my spirits soared. Jack Frost had dumped 15" of snow overnight, and the blizzard seemed to carry on and on with no sign of abatement. I eagerly called St. Mary's to find out if the fish fry had been canceled. I was informed that it had not been canceled, nor would it be. I would be required to go. I immediately fell into a depressed panic, followed closely by a period of manic denial, and then finally acceptance: What the hell, it's not like I'd be joining a cult. I mean would I be joining a cult? I reflected on this for some seconds before putting it out of my mind and playing with the cat.

Finally the appointed hour - 4:30 p.m. EST - arrived, and after excavating my car from its snowy entombment, I made my way the 1/4 mile to St. Mary's. Immediately I spotted the fish fry men and their showy frying apparatus. They seemed smug, so I gave them a wide berth. I walked into the rec-hall kitchen, and a number of people were assembled there. They all stopped talking and looked at me as I entered. I became shy about my dark sunglasses, Blackberry adhered to my left palm and heeled boots. This was the home-made sweater crowd and I looked out of place. Had I known this already and dressed this way on purpose...to draw ridicule and suspicon? I suspect the answer to that is yes. But I mustered my poise and aggression and informed the most senior looking spatula-wielding person in the room that Sister Carol had enlisted me. A general murmur ensued and Betty White informed me that I should report to Rita. She pointed me down a long corridor lined with industrial-sized cans of pepperoncinis and stewed tomatoes. I quick-stepped it down the hall (stopping only momentarily to gaze longingly at a 12lb can of tuna) and it was not long before I met Rita.

The name Rita brings to mind a spitfire of a sensual being hailing from Venezuela. I have no idea why. But my fish fry Rita was a different kettle of fish altogether. She was a strapping gal with bulging biceps and a severe buzz-coif that immediately caused an image of Paul Bunyan pop into my head. She was smiling in a way that suggested that she could reduce any man or woman in the place to a whimpering heap of shattered limbs in a heartbeat. I approached her slowly, admiring the way her powder blue acrylic sweater clung to her ponderous bosom. In true primate fashion, I smiled to demonstrate my lack of aggression, and then informed her that I was Sister Carol's dupe and at her disposal for the duration of the fish fry. She then favored me with a friendly blow to the back which loosened a lower molar crown, and led me to what I would come to think of as "our" pizza booth.

Rita had already laden the table with 9 pizza pies, an assortment of cafeteria lady gloves, spatula(s), and a little basket for the parishioners to deposit their fish fry entry tickets. She stood very close to me beaming and asking questions, and as we had no customers for quite some time, we had a great deal of time to get to know one another. One of her first disclosures to me was that she lived on a 200 acre farm with her husband, and had two grown children. I was stunned, to say the least. There was no evidence of estrogen radiating from this woman, and I could not believe she had been endowed with female reproductive organs. She waved to a little unassuming man across the room and said "There's my baby." It was her husband, and he gazed at her with unbridled adoration and submission from where he stood on the other side of the mossy green hall. And so it came to pass that we exchanged general information and life stories as an assortment of St. Mary's faithful queued for fish and slaw, and then sat in orderly rows to eat of its goodness. Every once in a while a small child, no doubt repelled by the look and sound of oil-drenched Perch, appealed to us for pizza, and we were only too happy to comply. I was in charge of placing each slice of pizza onto a little paper plate for our customers, and each time I did so, Rita rewarded me with a brilliant smile and a "Well done!"

And so it went and so it went as the night wore on. And at some point I became comfortable enough with Rita to ask: What is the deal with Sister Carol? Where does she live? Where are the others in her order... and questions of that ilk. Rita then looked me square in the eyes and said: Sister Carol lives here at the church, and she has a "Special Friend" who lives in Toledo and visits her every weekend. I longed to find out more about the special friend, but suddenly we were inundated with pizza requests and had to get to work. Alas, I never did find out about Sister Carol's special friend. But I do have a new friend in Rita, the strapping pizza dame I encountered at the annual St. Mary's Fish Fry during the Blizzard of 2010.

Fish Fry Fantasia

I'm just going to admit this right up front: I'm kind of obsessed with nuns. The habit, the sensible shoes, the compulsory life-sized crucifix dangling mid-bosom. The sartorial excesses (pre-Vatican II) leave me breathless with schoolgirl envy. I can't account for this, but you can chalk it up to fetishism, I guess.

Here in America, that cloistered, uniformed breed of Christ Bride is increasingly rare. One is hard-pressed to identify a nun in a crowd of civilians. But it can be done. Most assuredly a Sister will be of a certain age (60-93), sport a silvery hair helmet, and choose an ensemble of colorful polyester prints to complete the no-nonsense unisex look. The last vestige of habit will be the enormous cross adorning the red and green dahlia print blouse. But there's something less tangible than clergy couture that allows one to spot a nun: It is the general bearing of the individual. The piercing eyes, the nervous energy, the gamma rays of celibacy that radiate outward and make one aware that there was never (or shouldn't have been, anyhow) any funny business going on under the layers of synthetic and/or habit-ized attire.

Of course one hopes there were lapses in chaste judgment behind the rectory just before Vespers. But perhaps these are just the musings of the impure.

You see, the mind reels - positively reels - when it is forced to consider all that goes into the making of a nun. A nun must have a vocation, or calling to do so. But who's calling? God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, ok. But here in the clinical world of feet-on-the-ground reality, we require some hard core evidence. What causes one to reject the status quo in favor of a commune of same-gendered (or, I should say, same-sexed...for gender is variable) peers whose sole purpose is to honor The LORD? They willingly choose to succumb to a regiment that entails, first, waking up at a ridiculously early hour to pray together and secondly that trinity of non-negotiable guidelines: compulsory celibacy, poverty and "obedience". To me this smacks of military service, and that's nothing for me. But at the same time, I truly admire the level of discipline a career in the God-Service-Industry requires. I guess on some level I'd like to drop out of society (I'm half way there anyhow), and allow Mother Superior to boss me around. I have trouble making decisions.

And that's why I agreed to man the Pizza Booth at the St. Mary's Friday Fish Fry yesterday- because of a Vatican II-style Sister from another mister. Sister Carol's her name, and parish fun is her game. I jest. She's a punchy ball of atomic energy who pulls our little town together through sheer force of will, God love her. Shortly after we first moved to this little town that time forgot on the margins of Lake Erie, she paid us a courtesy call. Apparently we were suspected Catholics. My beloved spouse, upon learning that she was a nun, high tailed it to the man-haven garage to fiddle with gas caps and pliers. I, on the other hand, was delighted. I now had a nun in captivity, and duly invited her into my home. We had a nice chat, and I learned that she had a fear of dogs (we have three), and had received her vocational calling at the age of five, when she and her sister used to "play church" with their Barbie dolls, instead of doing the usual assortment of perverse, orgified reenactments one is wont to do with dolls at that tender age. From that time on, she would call from time to time, or wander over for a visit while I pretended not to be home. And this week, she asked me to put my money where my mouth is: participate. I found that in spite of my generally anti-social nature, I could not, would not, say no.

And the fish fry itself? Oh, it was the usual sort of thing, held in the recreational center next to the church. A large old hall with terrazzo floors and an asylum green paint job. A 9 foot crucifix adorning one wall, and rows and rows of banquet tables lining the interior and waiting to accommodate fish lovers great and small. Of course not everyone loves fish, which is why we had a pizza booth. I, along with my partner in crime Rita, duly doled out pizza (cheese, for it was Friday, after all, and meat is a no-no) to the mostly 12 and under crowd. From my vantage point, I was able to watch as Sister Carol flitted hither and yon among the faithful parish members, schmoozing, maitre de'ing, ushering, matchmaking and casting a watchful eye on her flock as they crossed themselves and dug into their Perch. She was a force of nature, resplendent in her element of captive parishioners and I, for one, admire that level of commitment. Amen.

Is it too late to become a plumber?

It's all well and good to have a nice display of bifacials and hand axes, but the people of Ohio want more bang for their buck. What? You say you also know the dental formula for the Lemur? You know all about Linnaeus and Darwin? You can draw a kinship diagram for the Bantu AND the Yanomami??! Surely these are marketable skills. Surely any company worth its weight in field notes would scramble to add you to their payroll.

Surely...not.

It's a rude awakening, I assure you. To jump through the many fiery hoops of hell in grad school and then find that in the great big wide world your trade is a tad too esoteric to be applied to the labor market in any meaningful way is...well it's surprising.

But why surprising? Did you really buy that line that Anthropology is an exciting career choice with many a lucrative prospect at the end of the road? Did you also believe that should you fail to "apply" those much sought after anthropological skills in the real world, you could slip into a cushy ivory tower position somewhere in New Hampshire? The fact is, the point of anthropology is to generate more anthropologists (should you snag that coveted tenured gig, like the one sperm who gets through), but otherwise the profession has gone the way of the gentleman farmer. If you have independent means, why it's a nice diversion and will make you a big ticket item at suburban cocktail parties. If, however, you foolishly embarked upon a career in anthropology to EARN A LIVING, well...you were kind of fooling yourself, don't you think?

Now I know you're all thinking: But what of The Naked Archaeologist?? What of all of those sound bites we've seen on Discovery Channel documentaries, and for chrissakes the occasional CNN special interest blurb? Many an anthropologist has been dusted off and called upon to lend credence or an aura of erudite expertise to any given number of televised shows. And while I've never been called upon to say "Yes, Ardipithecus is an extraordinary find that will change the way in which we study human evolution," I don't need to be called upon to know that it's not enough to pay the rent.

Having said all of that, I applaud any discipline for which the only goal is pursuit of knowledge, understanding, and self-indulgent exploration of exotic locales. But that's why we have travel agents, when you get down to it. You should be an anthropologist on your own time, and not drag our economy further down the slimy tubes of depression.