mozzarella

When I was ten or something we lived in a house across the lane from the house that we had just moved out of and around the corner from the house in front of the cemetery where we moved when my parents split up. That house had mice. This new house (and it's direct predecessor) sat on the corner of Hampshire Rd and Hampshire Ln. Across from Musicians Towers which I always thought was an old folks home for Russian women but someone recently told me is actually a housing project. Who knows.

The different between HampshireHampshire I and HampshireHampshire II was that HH I was the bottom apartment of a three story house. HH II was the right side of a two-way split house. One was short and wide, the other tall and skinny and not particularly conducive to the four-woman, four cat (not including kittens), two dog household that my mother ran. We had hay stacked up against the back of our kitchen window. "For insulation," my mom always told me. I never got why we didn't have hay stacked around other parts of our house if that was the case.

We had only just moved there at the time of this relatively unimportant story. As I already mentioned, I was about 10, but already knowledgeable about the joys and wonders of a mozzarella, basil, tomato, balsamic vinegar salad. And at the time of this unimportant story I was just being served a plateful of the deliciousness. Ready to enjoy it on the porch of our new skinny home with my mother and her friend. I piled my fork full of fresh cheesiness and crisp greenness and full redness and watched as the oily vinegar dripped onto the colorful plate below. I put the mess into my mouth and closed my eyes ready to be bombarded by the wonderful taste sensation that would inevitably follow. Much to my dismay, however, instead of being greeted by the friendly saltiness and pillowey sweetness I anticipated, i encountered a cruel sour taste that made my eyes squint and my mouth turn into something that should be in a comic book.

Naturally I screamed and made some sort of show about the whole thing, causing my mom to come careening in from the kitchen to see what was wrong with a swiftness that only a mother can conjure. Of course she was wearing her Basic Threads cotton socks and mid-careen slipped on the hardwood floors and plummeted towards a broken leg. Just in time for our annual road trip across the country to the Southwest where she would have to enjoy Arches National Park on crutches.

The End.