Next week is Mardi Gras! There is something about growing up in the New Orleans area that makes me feel like I should always give a nod to the day. In Louisiana, Mardi Gras is not just a day, it’s a season. It begins with parades that start weeks out from the actual Fat Tuesday. Kids get three days off of school. King Cakes abound. In honor of the season, I’m going to share three specific King Cake memories.

When I was in kindergarten during Mardi Gras season, kids would bring in king cakes like, every day. Every child would get a slice and whoever got the baby in their cake would have to bring the next king cake. (If you’re unfamiliar with king cake at this point, you’re like, what… a baby in a cake? Yes. There were tiny plastic babies in the cake and they were meant to represent Jesus.) All the kids wanted to get the baby. Whichever one received the coveted slice was sooooo excited. It was the kindergarten version of being a lottery winner.

Except for me.

Look, babies are gross, okay? This face illustrates how I feel about babies.

I thought babies were gross. I kept this feeling to myself because this was an unpopular opinion. And also, Jesus was a baby and you can't think JESUS is gross, don't you LOVE Jesus, Kindergarten Meredith?!?! Ugh, no, secretly. He's a baby! Babies are gross! I hated dolls of all kinds unless they were action figures. I would lie to my friends and tell them Cabbage Patch and Barbie were fine, I just happened not to own any. So I was the only one breathing a sigh of relief every time someone else got the baby. I would clap and cheer like a seat-filler at the Oscars with no stake in the game.

Then it happened. One day I got the baby. My friends were thrilled for me, my enemies glowered. I experienced a little death. Can't eat the rest of my cake now. Gross. I faked happiness as much as I could and secretly threw the baby away as soon as possible. I kept it all quiet. If I didn't acknowledge it, it didn't happen and I could move on. I didn't tell my parents.

The next day. No king cake. I had neglected to consider this part of the ritual. The other kids all remembered. When I walked into the classroom that morning one little boy came right up into my grill and yelled, “YOU GOT THE BABY AND YOU DIDN’T BRING A KING CAKE!” He began emphasizing certain words with stomps of his foot. “Now there’ll NEVER be another King Cake EVER again because NO ONE can get the baby because YOU didn’t bring a KING. CAKE.”

At this point my teacher intervened, assuring him that the ritual would continue and King Cake would still be made in spite of my lapse. My mom stammered that she hadn’t known. I wished to disintegrate. My mom rectified the situation and I had a king cake for the class the following day.

Being on a float is actually more fun than being in the crowd, in my opinion.

My dad was in a mardi gras crew while I was growing up, which afforded me the opportunity to ride with the Crew of Dionysus twice. Once when I was twelve, another member of the crew had a niece drop out, so I took her place. When my sister and I were seventeen, we each got a chance to be maids with the crew.

When you’re a maid, you get to go to the Mardi Gras Ball with a date. You get a custom dress made, and you get to take part in the ritual of choosing the king and queen. If you become queen, you get to ride on your own float, in said dress, rather than on the maids’ float in a tunic. All the girls wanted to be queen.

Except for me.

Growing up, I was hyper sensitive to textures. I hated anything touching my waist or neck, anything that was tight or fitted, etc. My mom can attest that as a small child, I threw epic tantrums if I had an uncomfortable tag in my shirt or pants that were too tight. As the doctor predicted I gradually began to grow out of it/tolerate it. (Yes, my poor mom actually took me to the doctor to see if something was wrong. He assured her that it was a real thing, and that as I discovered fashion I would someday wear jeans.) I was not entirely out of this phase in high school.

For one thing, I had the great fortune of going to high school in the 90s during the grunge phase! Fashion caught up with ME! It was cool to wear enormous clothes! I wore sports bras exclusively at that time and hated the fact that:

I would have to wear a normal bra for the entire duration of this Ball.
This dress was going to be fitted.

But I was slightly more adult at this phase and willing to tolerate it. I mean, custom dress, right? Maybe I would look awesome.

No one looked awesome.

Normally, the Crew required the dresses to be all white. The year that I was a maid, the seamstress convinced them to let her put some silver in. The result was a monstrosity with white poofy sleeves that would have rivaled any 80s prom movie, a silver sequined torso, and a floofy white satin skirt. Oh, we all looked awful. Still, you got a tiara and heels and most girls would still have liked to become queen.

There it is. You can’t see the skirt, but trust me, it doesn’t help matters.

The King Cake was the center of the monarch ritual. The maids would form a circle around the cake, which had been pierced at regular intervals with a medallion, the ribbon of which was left hanging. Music would begin, the maids would circle the cake. Once the music stopped, the maids would pull the ribbon of whichever medallion was closest to them. One medallion had pearls around the edge, the rest were plain. If you were the fortunate/unfortunate girl with the pearled medallion, you were crowned Queen.

The Queen then chose the King by choosing a name out of a hat. (Apparently you could pay more to have more entries.)

My family filmed the event and a video exists of the King Cake Ritual. Afterward, the queen and king march around the dance floor once, followed by the maids while everyone applauds. The procession passed right by the camera. I give a very hearty thumbs-up to the lens as I pass. I have not become Queen.

My first Mardi Gras out of Louisiana was when I was going to Exeter University in England. While living there, my best friend was named Lindsey. I had some ups and downs during my time overseas, but Lindsey was a wonderful friend throughout. When the two of us got together, there was nothing we couldn’t do. She and I decided to throw a Mardi Gras Ball.

We checked the rules of our hall, the rules of the university, etc. We created tickets, registered our event officially with the school, had flyers, had a bar set up, purchased champagne in bulk, rented flutes, hired a DJ, doormen, etc. My mom shipped us decorations from New Orleans. We had a spreadsheet and a budget. We figured out how much we would have to charge to break even and how many tickets we would have to sell. We made it ‘fancy dress’ and decided to have a King and Queen ritual. Since there would be no parade, we would just have a nice gift for the king and the queen.

Me in the purple and Lindsey in the silver prepping for our ball with some friends. I’m still impressed with us.

We ticked all the boxes. We had it lined up to make the money back. The day approached. Doubloons were clue tacked to walls, streamers, masks and other decorations were hung. Bottles of champagne were ‘chilling’ on my balcony. (Our resident hall was an old manor that had been donated to the university. My room was at the top of the stairs looking out over the front lawn. All I had to do was climb out the window to enjoy the balcony. We weren’t allowed to do that for safety reasons, but, twenty-one.) The only thing we had left to do was make a king cake.

Nevermind that neither Lindsey nor I had so much as baked a muffin from scratch before. We went to the store, commandeered a friend's oven and gave it our best shot. Obviously there was no King Cake dough in the store, so we just got bread dough and shaped it into a rough king cakey shape. Oh, it turned out horrendous looking! But we slathered it with icing and sprinkled green, purple and yellow sugar over it and figured that it would be good enough for the ceremony.

The party went amazingly. The place was packed with people dancing and enjoying the champagne. And one point it ran out and I went up the stairs to get our last two bottles. I have a clear memory of standing at the top of the staircase, looking out over the crowd below, lifting both bottles into the air and hearing a resounding cheer.

The King Cake Ritual went off without a hitch and the revelers were inebriated enough that every last scrap of cake was eaten. When it came time for the party to end, we announced that people could take any decorations that they wanted. Every. Single. Item. Was taken. Down to the last doubloon. We didn’t even have to clean up.

And we both ended up making ten pounds when all was said and done.

I haven’t been to a lot of Mardi Gras parades since I was young. I think my last one was when I was in college with some friends. (Underaged, hauling around a bottle of Jack Daniels that we just passed between us. It was amazing.) You have to be in the right mood for a Mardi Gras parade and honestly, I’m not big into crowds.

I have had three king cakes since I left Louisiana. Once was my first year in Chicago. My mom shipped it up to me and I tried to get people together. I heard a lot of “What’s a king cake?” I brought some mix back at some point and used it to make one king cake for a birthday in Chicago. The last store-bought one was when Dean and I took a vacation to Orange Beach a few years ago. I saw one in the grocery and had to have it.

Dean got the baby.

I’ve just realized that he owes me a King Cake.

King Cake; a Mardi Gras story