You could exchange fake money for real hot dogs? Mormons had the best religion in the world!

As recently noted, while growing up my besty was Mormon. She was also the only girl my age in the neighborhood so maybe the two are one and the same thing.

It was a rural place with tumbleweeds always blowing by, practically. But in an awesome coincidence doled out by the normally indifferent Cosmos, Laura shared my love of ghost hunting, space aliens, comic books, building forts, and making maps. We had everything important in common. This made our bond tight.

However, her family was religiously pressed to encourage her friendship with other, Celestial Kingdom-bound Latter Day Saints children instead of Captain Highliner-on-Fridays, genuflecting, Pope-worshipping sooty-headed Catholics. So all too depressingly often, Laura was in the company of various, lame-o girls from outside the 'hood who were driven over for so-called play dates, designed to encourage Mormon mingling.

I realized that as BFF as I thought we were, there would always be an invisible barrier between us and perfect friendship, like Tiny Tim standing outside the window of the candy store. The religion thing divided us. Blame the adults.



Especially awful was a device known as 'Family Day,' which took place every Sunday, a perfectly fine day for bike-riding, swimming, Barbies and various adventuring. Really, once the bother of church was over with, Sunday was just Saturday Redux. But (as Laura explained) it was her family's custom to attend church and then socialize only amoungst themselves for the entire day, to strengthen the family unit or something.

As wasteful as this seemed of a day that could be much more awesomely utilized, it was tolerable as long it appeared to be just another mysterious parental rule laid down that had to be blindly followed lest one gets a thumping. However, one "family day" I was going by her house and saw her drinking Kool-Aid on the porch with a girl from our school named Roberta. I think their heads were ven thrown back in laughter. Roberta, that little bitch, was also LDS. So that's the way it's being played. "Family Day" actually just meant "Mormon Day." Well, fuck me! Why couldn't Catholic parents be as concerned with making sure their offspring had someone to drink cherry Kool-Aid with of a Sunday afternoon? I entertained myself  in morose solitude that day, thinking grim and jealous thoughts.

Despite my moral outrage, Laura's Mormonishness remained an unspoken-of aspect of our palship we did not really have the resources to address. It wasn't a matter of religion to us, just Mysterious Differences. I resented that on her end, religion was like a special club full of dazy-eyed dolts trying to steal away my sidekick. On my end, I was instructed by my mother to give it no credence, to 'not take it personally' when Laura was required to do mysterious things like not hang out with me on certain days. Because, my mum explained, everyone not Catholic was a little bit...crazy.

When Laura invited my ass to a carnival at her church one Sunday, I was thrilled. I was finally breaking down the barriers! My mom was reluctant to let me go, but after she saw how balls-out excited I was about hanging out with Laura on a long-forbidden Sunday she was unwilling to deal with the fallout of denying me. (Catholics are also really snotty when it comes to letting their kids go into other churches. It might plant the Seed of Doubt.)

So we went to this carnival in the basement of the Mormon church in town. It wasn't like a church though. Real churches had bleeding statues and the reek of incense, and places where you weren't allowed to step. But the Mormon church was like someone's rumpus room. It was all wood panelling and not a statue in sight.

They had tables set up with snacks and baking, live music, booths of games you can't lose at like Go Fish and Lucky 7, people in costumes wandering around performing magic tricks, and body cut-outs you could stand behind with your face poking out, and someone would take your picture. None of it cost money. It was a chance for kids to spend "credits" they had earned throughout the year by doing good deeds. When I found that out I was disappointed, thinking I'd have to simply watch other people having fun - until Laura handed me an envelope full of freebie credits for guests! There were 50 of 'em. Rad. That was more than some kids had earned.

I wandered around seeing what my fake money could buy me. Wow! Everything was cheap. I was rich.

Then I saw the hot dog stand.

Five credits each.

Say what! Delicious, orangey flavour-tubes nestled in white buns with vats of ketchup and mustard to slather on them, for 5 credits each! And I had 50 credits! I could exchange theoretical money for actual hot dogs? This was the best religion in the world.

(Before this continues it should be noted that as a child I was a fatty. A fatty-fat-fatty, in fact. I don't know how it happened because we never really had enough to eat. Maybe that's what did it. When I did have access to treats I would launch myself at them like nobody's business. That sad epoch is chronicalled here: 'Baker's Mistake'.)

I stood in line and then greedily, disbelievingly asked for a hot dog, and got it. I ate it while me and Laura played a game of ring-toss. Then I just watched her for a while, reluctant to tap any more into what I was already considering my "hot dog fund." Soon, I was standing in line again. I went for the gusto and got two, to save myself a trip. I munched those up and got in line for more.

"Aren't you the little girl who just got some hotdogs?" asked the man.

"No!"

They were going down like butter. I got in line for more. I was motivated partially by greed, by the novelty of lacking my mother's appetite-moderating disapproval, and also by the satisfaction that I was in some roundabout way putting one over on the Man. Free hot dogs, holy shit. Make hay while the sun shines! Munch, munch, munch.

"OK, little girl, you've had plenty of hot dogs now! I'm not giving you any more!" said the hot dog man when I hovered into view before him for the fifth or so time. My good luck, hardly to be believed, had just run out. The hot dog man had a pink nose and dark shiny eyes that had seemed friendly but had now glossed over with disgust. He was a stranger to me, so I'd assumed I would be equally strange to him and could evade identification on my recurring trips.

"Um, OK," I said, scurrying away in terror. My face was hot and when I found Laura again she didn't understand why I didn't have any credits left so I could play games with her. We had only been there half an hour. She wanted to get our pictures taken with our faces poking out from behind paintings of two people from olden times, a woman in a ballgown and a man in a top hat. She would buy it with her credits, even though it cost 10! For punishment I had to be the man, though.

I ended up with the picture, and I have it still, though I hate to look at it, because I am bright red and fighting back tears, while Laura sticks out her tongue happily for the camera.

Shortly after I threw up extravagantly in the parking lot and began weeping abjectly at the unholy pain in my guts. On the ride home I was still humiliated and so shamed I couldn't speak, and did not express appropriate gratitude for Mormon kindness to ever be given a second stab at infiltration.

Looking out the car window made me sick, as did the memory of eating so much chewy orange meat. I threw up numerous times all evening. My mother viewed it not so much a hotdog overdose, but a fundamental rejection of Mormonism, and hoped that I had been taught a good lesson...

Reindeer Assholes and the Books of Blood.

Land of Shadows.