I Feel Sorry for those Empanadas
“I feel sorry for those empanadas,” I said to my friend as we watched paper plates of huge fat empanadas end up in the trash can where we were standing. We were at the farewell reception of the 2026 San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference. Based on the number of half-eaten empanadas we had decided to forego that cart and enjoyed our tacos instead.
Those poor uneaten empanadas. I related to them. They looked so tasty and yet had been found wanting by so many. I felt like this had happened to me many times in my life. I write about several of those times in my soon to be release memoir. I wondered what was wrong with those empanadas. Obviously, I wasn’t curious enough to risk tasting something that so many people found lacking. Was it their size? They were quite large. Were they cold or did they just lack some umami taste?
It made think of my 40th high school reunion. I made the trip back in 2015. I hadn’t been back since my father‘s death in 2000 and my brother and I had sorted the family belongings and sold the house that dad had occupied for 60 years. I’m not sure what called me back. I was going to have to stay in a hotel rather than the family home. And I felt disconcerted by that. I hadn’t been to any other reunions before my 40th and I haven’t gone to any since then. I made the 2,000 mile trek back because of some primal urge to touch base with my roots.
I went to the reunion and connected the most with a group of fellow elementary school classmates. We had all gone to the same elementary school and we bonded over that. I did not feel like a partially eaten empanada engaging with the group. But there were other moments when people I didn’t recognize spoke to me.
One particular gentleman came up, read my name tag and said in response to nothing, “Oh I remember you. We thought you were a snob.” I didn’t know how to reply to that and he fortunately moved on.
His comment however stayed with me and I thought of a reply after he left. I wanted to explain that what he had taken for snobbery was a sixteen-year-old’s shyness and insecurity. He may have assumed I was a snob and thought I was above everyone else because my father was mayor at the time. He may have thought I thought I weas too good to talk to lowly commoners like him. Far from it. The only thing I was thinking about was wanting to look like I fit in, like I was part of a group. For I wasn’t even a partially eaten empanada. I was just an empanada that hadn’t even been grazed.
Let’s hear it for partially eaten empanadas. Was there a time in your life when you either felt sorry for partially eaten empanadas or felt like one yourself?