Apropos Of Nothing

I was playing basketball with my brother the other day when I remembered the story about getting lost in church one day and eating my weight in egg rolls.
When I was about six or seven I was in the childrens choir. We were practicing in the gigantic gothic sanctuary, and when practice ended I stayed behind to talk to the organ player. He was a nice older man and I think he was amused by all the songs I could request. (Having been raised in a musical household by liberal intellectuals I had an obnoxious vocabulary and musical taste to match it.) After an hour of name that tune with the organ player I looked up to see that my group was gone and I was alone in this massive room. The organ player asked me if I knew how to get to the choir room by myself, and I lied ‘yes’ because I didn’t want to worry him.
It helps to know that around this time a contingent of Koreans had been welcomed into the “church family”, and had been set up with one of the smaller chapels to use for services and the use of all the common areas. It also helps to know that on this particular day the dining hall was being used by said Koreans for a fellowship dinner.
So, cut to six year old me in overalls and Keds, bopping through this huge church–I mean that literally; it occupies about four city blocks–looking for the choir room. Well, after an hour of looking I don’t find a choir room but I do find the smell of Asian cooking. I wander into the dining hall and am immediately greeted by friendly Koreans milling about with dishes of food and happy faces. I explain that I’m lost, but with a grasp of English not much better than my own we sort of settle on ‘wait here for your parents’. I mean, of course they’re looking for me right?
Finally my mom does find me in the middle of my sixth egg roll. There’s still some choir left but instead we hop into the brown Toyota and go home, where I collapse with a belly full of wonton wrappers and cabbage and sleep for about two days. And that, apropos of nothing, is the beginning of my long love affair with Asian food.