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.
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.