As I walked through Walmart way too early this morning to get dog food, I was reminded of a time in which I made an unintentional and yet amusing faux pas.
You see, this Code-404FP (Faux Pas in Progress) started when my two childhood best friends and I went to Walmart on Sunday the day before Passover. (Yes, this is important to the story)
Our church in Leesburg, Va. was hosting a Rabbi who was coming to talk to us about the Passover from the point of view of a Messianic Jew.
After the service, knowing it would take forever before the church crowd was ready to stop shaking hands and go to lunch, we went to Walmart. After all, Easter had already passed the week or so before, and now the candy would be over half off. The fact that the chosen Chinese Buffet was in the same parking lot was a bonus.
On the shelf was a veritable hollow milk chocolate barnyard. There were cows, bunnies, chicks and, for the purposes of the story, a hollow milk chocolate pig for $1.
We bought 4 pigs and assorted other chocolates and met the after-church lunch rush at the Red Apple buffet. When we arrived, our spoils of war in hand, we offered chocolates to the various people in the lobby. Why not? We were all working, we could afford to split the bounty.
It is what Jesus and Chocolate Old MacDonald would have wanted.
Immediately as I reached into the bag to pull out my chocolate offering for the Rabbi, my awareness began to reboot — just not fast enough for me to stop myself from handing him a chocolate pig. To a Messianic Jew. On the day before Passover.
I swear the music stopped. Every knife and fork scraping the plates stopped. Even that one crying baby stopped just long enough to judge me.
All the Rabbi could do, after blankly staring at the two dumb teenagers who offered him a chocolate pig, was laugh. And after him seemingly everyone else began to laugh. Maybe even the formerly crying baby and chocolate Old MacDonald … I don’t know.
Every year, since I check the Walmart Easter chocolate section. I have never seen a chocolate pig since. It existed once — just long enough to get me laughed at by a Rabbi.
