Manicotti on the Square

I made manicotti for our company last night, that and sweet potato soup. It's a very good soup recipe that never fails to please. The manicotti is good too, but, due to the intensive preparation that it requires, I seldom make it.

Some of the ingredients were already at hand — garlic, onions, chicken, carrots, and spices — but I had to shop for the rest on Friday — manicotti, cream cheese, ricotta etc. Sadly missing from both lists was mozzarella. It's hard to be me. As careful as I think I'm being, as careful as I try to be, I have a dreadful propensity to forget one ingredient. I have lost count of the number of times that I have been forced to return to the grocery store for just one single, solitary ingredient, an item that I forgot just the day before or even just hours ago. It always seems to be just one ingredient.

Some of us you are greatly blessed to possess the meticulous gene. I am sure that there is such a gene, and, no doubt, by now it is clear to you that I have missed out; I simply and clearly am not imbued with this little genetic wonder. My life is full of examples of careless oversights. Fortunately, however, I also am also bereft of the memory gene, so I forget most of the more embarrassing predicaments in which I have become embroiled.

I do remember one incident, however. It serves as a good illustration of how careless I can be. I was a teenager writing an algebra exam. You know how they always give you a few easy questions at the beginning of math tests, questions to get you on a roll, questions for the non-brainiacs who are sure to wipe out on the more demanding problems as they build in complexity? This one was in that first section, the gimme section. I remember it well: 5²= ? While I freely and readily confess to never having a particularly sharp aptitude for math, I wasn't all that terrible at it either: not as good as at English, for example, but even I knew the answer to the square of 5 (25 in case you doubt me). Can't get much simpler as a matter of fact.

Except that I wrote down, 10 — which is exactly what the answer would have been if the question had been: 5 + 5 = ? Which is, of course, how my brain happened to skew the question in that particular moment. As soon as I got the paper back, my error jumped out at me, and, not for the first time, I began to bang my head on the desk. The best thing about doing that, I can now report, is that it feels very good when you stop; it feels most excellent actually.

Regardless: the example serves to demonstrate that I mean exactly what I say when I confess that I am prone to making careless errors. I do this with such regularity that I have a hunch that my extra trips to the grocery store have now consumed enough gas to have paid for a flight to Tahiti and an ensuing two-week, luxury vacation. I'm not sure that it would have paid for the return flight as well, but who really cares? It's all only a hunch though because my forget gene doesn't really allow me to accurately count the number of needless grocery store runs that I have made.