by Javier Manjarres

The Shark Tank received its AM wake up call via text message from the next Lt. Governor of Florida, Jennifer Carroll to join her for lunch. Shortly after Church services, Representative Carroll met up with a small group of us at a small neighborhood restaurant in Fort Lauderdale to sit down and eat some good ol’ homecooked food.  Upon entering this restaurant, we were greeted by numerous pictures of President Barack H. Obama–including a life size cardboard cut out of him that was positioned at the entrance of the restaurant- classic!

I could not help but to go against the grain and tease Jennifer about how mediocre the Miami Dolphins were playing this year. As you know, her son Nolan plays football for the lowly ‘fish’ and like a good mom, she pulled out all the excuses for the reason why the Dolphins were doing so bad, along with her rattling off his accomplishments. LOL!!! (I am going to get my ear pulled for that).  But good for the Dolphins, as they pulled out the Big W today against the Bengals.

But asides from the NFL, I could not stop with teasing her about ‘American’ football. El Sharko was an avid ‘Futbol’ aficionado and could not resist poking fun at the National Soccer team of Trinidad and Tobago. Representative Carroll is originally from Trinidad and told me that she too followed the sport.  The futbol played in Trinidad can be compared to what Little League Baseball is to Major League Baseball here in the USA (Sharko snark intended!) After receiving numerous threats of physical harm to my person, I El Sharko felt the need to  drop the line of chastising and ‘ exit stage left’.

All in all, it was a very quaint and relaxed lunch-call it the ‘calm before the 48 hr storm’.