Raise The Flag

Texarkana was deemed the midpoint between Houston and Mena, Arkansas during the child swap that results from divorces. It is not the midpoint. In fact, it is about 300 miles shy of being the midpoint. Win mom.

During said child swap trips, my brothers and I would beg for mom to stop at Pancho’s. For those of you who are not from Texarkana or other similar sketchy towns, Pancho’s is a Mexican buffet. If those two words together don’t bother you, they should. It is inevitable that such a place would be shut down for health code violations. By pure coincidence, this fate befell the castle that held our crown jewels; sour cream enchiladas, chili rellenos, tacos, and sopapillas. This was all served on a metal plate with a red plastic rim. Raise the flag was the motto. Once you were seated at the table, you simply had to raise your flag to let your server know that you needed something. My brothers and I would have enchilada eating contests at Pancho’s. We also had many illegitimate birthdays here. Gone are the days where you can get away with such shenanigans…I’m fairly certain that most places check your ID now. It is a sad day when a kid can’t get a free piece of birthday cake you know? I digress. These sopapillas were made in house, and the smell was overwhelming and wonderful. They’d bring them out in a basket at which point my brothers and I would swarm them like we were prisoners who’d been in solitary confinement without food for a week. The flag would go straight up, and the server would walk over and wonder what the hell else these crazy kids could possibly consume. Christopher liked to refer to Pancho’s trips as the time to break out his “hollow leg.” I never really liked the term, and am still not a fan. I feel like people who use terms like hollow leg have illegitimate children at an early age. Case in point.

Honey reminds me of these trips to Pancho’s with my family. I have acquired a strange obsession with honey this year. I don’t remember ever wanting it all the time before in my life. Sure, I like the occasional bowl of Honeycombs. Honey on my biscuit, done. I have been through three bottles of honey in four months. This is not normal. I put it on peanut butter and banana sandwiches, in my smoothies, on hot biscuits, on a brownie the other day. I even tried it on vanilla ice cream. Hot tea. Everything. I can also not confirm nor deny that I drink honey out of the bear bottle when I need to get a sweet fix.

I read somewhere that if a person was to ever become stranded on a desert island, the one food they could eat for the rest of their life on this island is honey. Honey is apparently the only food that could sustain you for the rest of your life. Nothing else, just honey. Sure, your teeth would fall out, but you’d be alive. This beat my mint chocolate chip ice cream answer hands down.
Does this new love of honey mean that I am subconsciously missing my childhood? Am I so far into the throws of adulthood that I am already having a midlife crisis? Or are we programmed to worry all the time even if life gives us nothing to worry about? Borrowing worry out of the worry bucket is never a good idea if that is the case. Either way, I hope I can find a study that suggests that there are huge health benefits to consuming mass amounts.

I’d like to apply the “raise the flag” concept to life. Think genie in a bottle type of thing. Raise that flag, ask away, wish granted. Trifecta. Hey, it worked when we were kids at Pancho’s – binge eating sour cream enchiladas and betting each other that we could out eat the other. Those were great days.