White Castle: Bad for indigestion, so-so for memories

For dinner tonight I had White Castle. No big deal. Most of my meals come served in some sort of paper product. And thanks be to Jesus the Dominick's Finer Foods by me closed. In my 100 years of solitude I used to grab their $5 pizza, sit around the house watching non-cable TV with a bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce as my buddy and have the whole pie gone by 10 p.m.

No wonder I once weighed 240.

White Castle tonight reminded me of when I was really, really young. Of when I had light blond hair and a promising future, at least by South Side standards.

My mom wasn't much for cooking, so for some reason I remember having sliders of Fridays. But that can't be, because I was raised Catholic and am old enough to know we still had meatless Fridays all year or at least until I was a bit older and we were out in the south suburbs.

And then I recalled that we would go to a White Castle-like place to get a deep fried shrimp or to another place for very greasy cheese pizza.

I remember sitting in the back of a sedan of some sort waiting for the order to be ready. I spent way too much time as a kid in the back of a boatish car, heading off on weekends to visit grandparents or dead relatives at cemeteries or to birthday parties for cousins where we would play floor hockey in the basement.

There are pictures of my folks from before I was born where they had parties of their own. I don't recall many being held at our house. The word insular comes to mind, a childhood spent among adults and their family gossip and drama and not many memories of my own of other kids.

Does anyone have friends from when they were in kindergarten anymore?

I do have a baby picture of me, a triptych of me in a vest and short pants, hand colored with the vest red, the pants black, and the eyes so blue and oddly puppy dog sad. I know it's me by the hairline.

I'm still trying to figure out what happened. Aren't most of us?