Yesterday, I revealed that until last November, I had no idea that the red thing inside of a green olive was a pepper.  I thought it came with the olive.  I am 35.

Today’s story, believe it or not, is even more embarrassing.

And lest you think I exaggerate, I can even ask the person who witnessed this almost twenty years ago to verify.  His name is Justin, and has been a great friend for twenty-five years.  In fact, when I got married, he got a marryer (that’s probably not a word) license and became our officiant.  I also blame him for the subsequent divorce.

Anyway, back in high school when I was sixteen a bunch of us were in Justin’s folks’ kitchen.  I’m sure we were waxing something mature like which girls were in our “five hottest” list.  I almost certainly was not on anyone’s list.  I think I must have become better looking over time because since I’ve left school, a number of female classmates have told me that I’m handsome.  Think about it – for people you’ve known for years, you would only say, “You look so thin!” if the person was huge before.

Somehow the conversation moved over to pasta – who knows why.  And I said something like this…

I think it’s just amazing how they find pasta and harvest it – so much work!

Justin looked at me and saw an opening.  He jumped in.

“What do you mean ‘find pasta’?  Where do you think it comes from?”

Wait – doesn’t pasta come from the sea?

“There’s no way you just said that sentence.  Say it again.”

Uh oh.

I’m not sure why, but I had no idea that pasta was a wheat product.  I mean, I saw when my mom would make spaghetti using one of those circular measuring things.  I knew it came dry.  I had just assumed that when it was pulled out of the sea (note – I didn’t know if “sea” meant ocean or freshwater), it was dried and then packaged.

This shit so totally comes from the sea.

Please realize, that I was not a total moron.  In school I was in all accelerated classes (except math – NERDS!), and was generally believed to be intelligent by my peers.

I think I somehow linked it up with rice, which grows on paddies in water.  Which, you have to admit, is sort of in the ballpark of pasta.

No?

Before I wrote that last piece about rice, I absolutely Google’d “where does rice grow” and read the Wikipedia article on rice, just to confirm.  Bear in mind that I have been to four foreign countries where I have actually seen rice growing on water in paddies.

Tagged as: divorce