The Chimichanga Story -- by Weedle (and re-constructed by Paul)

Weedle had the rare gift of being able to turn the most inconsequential of occurrences into a hilarious story rooted in a kind of quirky wisdom. She liked to tell this one.

Weedle had finished a meal with friends at La Parilla, a Mexican restaurant in downtown Lawrence. She had an uneaten chimichanga left over, still in its paper wrapper, so she decided to take it home for lunch on another day. She put it on the roof of the car while she unlocked the door, set it on the back seat and drove off.

Somewhere on south Massachusetts St., she saw the chimichanga fly forward past her side window and roll down the street in front of her car. She was angry with herself for having driven off with the chimichanga still on the roof of the car. But then she clearly remembered putting it on the back seat. She turned around, and there was the chimichanga, right where she had left it, sitting on the back seat as properly as a paying passenger, but it was naked. The paper wrapper was gone. The wind, blowing through the open windows, had miraculously unwrapped the paper with great delicacy, without disturbing or even moving the chimichanga. Then the paper was rolled up again into the shape of the chimichanga, sucked out the window, and, rather than being drawn into the slipstream of air to fall behind the car, was somehow flung forward, to land in the street ahead of her, looking like the entire chimichanga had fallen off the roof of the car.

She marveled at this, and wondered how the laws of physics could account for the behavior of this thing. Weedle had a strong belief in an all-powerful and benevolent God, but like any person would who is as perceptive and analytical and especially irreverent as she was, Weedle found in this event not only confirmation of God’s wonderful abilities, but also affirmation that, for all His awesome powers and hardly-justifiable kindness toward humans, God also has a really wacky sense of humor.

For evidence of this, we have seen the duck-billed platypus, Marty Feldman’s eyeballs, and the portraits of Jesus (or is it Che Guevara?) scorched into the surfaces of English muffins and whole-wheat toast. Scholars and researchers will long lament the fact that the celebrated chimichanga, brushed by the hand of God, was consumed by Weedle for lunch the next day. Nevertheless, we know that the prophets walk yet among us, as long as we can still repeat Weedle’s miraculous chimichanga story.