One burrito, please -- and hold the erudition

I’ve just asked for a Burrito Supreme (with soft taco) at the food court, and the Taco Bell guy wants a name that he can place on the order.

After I tell him my name, he decides to edify me.

He tells me there is a movie called “Interstellar” that includes a character named Murphy, who he says was named for Murphy’s Law, which he says is “Whatever can happen will happen.”

I have no idea why he’s telling me this. Perhaps he is a film school grad who is biding his time slinging quesadillas while Mr. Spielberg reads his screenplay.

I’m tempted to tell him that a) I was named for my father and b) Murphy’s Law actually is “If anything can go wrong, it will.” (At least that’s how I understand it, and my name, after all, is Murphy.) But I don’t want to spark an argument; there might be several hills that I would be willing to die on, but a taco stand is not one of them.

At my table in the food court I notice that the bag containing the elements of my repast has a seal that bears this message: “Worth the Wake.” Hmm. I know that the Triple-A ball club in my town has a promotion in which an opposing player is dubbed the “K-Man,” and if this player strikes out, all the fans have 48 hours to exchange their tickets for a Taco Bell taco.

This, combined with the message on the seal, makes me wonder whether funeral directors now have a similar promotion to boost attendance at calling hours.

But I now see that underneath “Worth the Wake” is another message: Taco Bell is now serving breakfast until 11 a.m. So I suppose the slogan should be “Worth the Awakening.” (It had never occurred to me that anyone would eat breakfast at a Taco Bell. I myself am not inordinately proud to be eating my lunch there now.)

And I’m wondering whether the putative Oscar-winning scribe behind the counter would be interested in an idea my friend Dan once had. It’s based on the old movie “D.O.A.,” in which a poor schlub played by Edmond O’Brien is poisoned because of a document he notarized. There’s no antidote, and he spends the rest of the picture trying to nail his killer before going to that big civil service office in the sky. (Come to think of it, my old man had what we would now call a side hustle as a notary public. Who knew that he was taking both his stamp and his life in his hands whenever he walked across the street to notarize a loan application for a neighbor?)

Dan has proposed a remake in which O’Brien’s character is at a local ballgame when the K-Man strikes out, but he then faces all sorts of sinister obstacles when he tries to get his free taco before the 48 hours run out. (“Whaddya mean this is a Chick-fil-A? It was a Taco Bell just yesterday!”)

Think of it — the taco as a Hitchcockian maguffin! I can just see Sir Alfred drooling. (And it’s far from a pretty sight.)

The title of our opus? Obviously it would be “Taco on Arrival” — “T.O.A.”