Of all the embarrassing nicknames that kids pick up in elementary school, mine certainly is one of the least creative but most descriptive: pickle girl. I can’t say I didn’t deserve it though. Every day, without fail, I would bring pickles to school with my lunch. I crunched on them with pride and wore my vinegary breath with my head held high. Then, after my long, tedious days of elementary school, I’d go home and have even more pickles. Simply put, I could not get enough of them. Every kid needs something to be completely obsessed with, and Vlastic kosher baby dill whole pickles happened to be mine.
Over time I brought pickles to school less and less. But that didn’t prevent me from discovering new ways to enjoy my favorite “vegetable.”
Shane’s Seafood and BBQ is a drive-through/sit-down restaurant with the greasiest, hottest, most delicious Louisiana style meats and eats around.
(Here is where I interject to say that Shane’s is not, by any means, something a normal person would adore so much. But working directly across the street from it during the hot Louisiana summers and being able to smell the catfish being fried around lunchtime everyday would make anyone a Shane’s worshipper.)
Anytime I needed a pick-me-up in high school, especially during exam season, you could find me in the Shane’s drive-through window at 9:45 pm begging for three pieces of catfish and a box of fried pickles. This was my newest form of pickle-obsession: shame-eating a box of fried pickles big enough for a family of four alone in my car. It was glorious.
The last time I went to Shane’s was nearly two years ago. I’ve tried the fried pickles at many other restaurants since then, and although they’re usually delicious (after all, it’s quite difficult to get me to say pickles are anything but delicious), they’re still not the perfectly burning-hot, greasy, thin-battered slices that I have come to love so dearly. I may not have been called “pickle girl” in years, but my intense love and continued cravings for Shane’s fried pickles show that I will never really fully disassociate from my childhood moniker.
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