Lent. I remember Lent. It was back when everyone in the neighborhood had a dirty forehead.

OK, I’m being irreverent — that comes with age. Yes, I understand the meaning of Lent.

Every year Lent comes with screen directions for those who have practiced it since Catholic kindergarten, but who have forgotten the rules.

Here are a few you tossed away like beads at Mardi Gras, that you can catch up with before coloring the eggs.

She, still a listed Catholic, does what she can to follow those rules within the shadows of COVID-19. But with age knocking on our doors, everything gets harder.

I recall my five Catholic schools when, unlike the following public school years, all of the details simply faded away like M&Ms spilled around the pool. I got the ashes, gave up candy and Rosemary DeBranco. Well, I got the ashes.

There I stood through the years, an arthritic old school altar boy who became an actor, then a comedian, and then stand-up comic and then a newspaper writer, and — POOF — religion and its rituals went blank.

Now, when I need fresh material each week, Lent arrives with something like this list that suddenly pops up with my email like a dispatch from “Headquarters.” I grab it and start typing:

FIVE LENTEN WAYS TO OBSERVE LENT

Here, the list gives me five modern ways to observe Lent, so I can use them to make positive changes to my lifestyle.

1. Abstain from social media and texting

Well, that ain’t gonna happen. First of all, I scan social media to get material for reviews and columns. Texting? I don’t text. I Gmail my daughters and they do the same several times a day. It’s fun and we get to see what each of us is wearing. Does that count? Oh! It does in this next way to observe.

2. Make Fridays family time

Yeah. Well, that all ended in grade school.

Our family is a divided entity separated by thousands of miles, history and years in age.

Jillana, as most Hollywood agents and attorneys do, gets sucked into this. I repeat: These are not “jobs”; they are “callings” like a priest or rabbi, where clients of all colors, ages and religions zoom her at all hours of the day asking if what they are wearing makes them look fat.

Most agents will simply say, “If religion interferes with any of this, get another agent.”

3. Make special Lenten dishes every Friday

That generally means no meat. I still need that explained to me. So I should like Van De Camp Frozen Fish Sticks? How about Filet O’ Fish at McDonald’s, or just have a beer and french fries until Easter.

4. Turn off the screen and pick up a book

(I would suggest “Will Write For Food” by yours truly (North County Press), or Amy Calder’s “Comfort is an Old Barn” (Islandport Press).

5. Don’t wear makeup or get a haircut

Yes, those are really included and they’re not kidding. I tried both one Lent by giving up toning my winter cheeks with some of her rouge. She’s now hiding it.

No hair cut. That started in the ’60s. My agent at the time simply said, “Get another agent.”

Thanks for observing. Happy Lent.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer. 

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