The unfairness of life

Life isn't fair. My mother told me this when I was growing up, but I didn't realize at the time that she was talking about all of life. I thought she just meant when I was 13. Things were bound to get better, right? I mean, what was the point of becoming an adult if things still weren't going to be fair?

But here I am, an adult, and I that find my mother was indeed talking about all of life. A few weeks ago, there was a dramatic display of life's little tendency to be unfair, right in my kitchen.

Regular readers will recall my rather radical ideas for ridding the world of unwanted zucchinis. That was due to no mere intellectual exercise. Joe brought home an enormous zucchini from work one day. "What is that?" I said.

"A zucchini," he said helpfully.

"I can see that," I said. "But why?"

"You said you wanted to make zucchini bread."

"I didn't mean I wanted to make enough to send to all the starving of the world," I said. Not that I don't want to help end starvation, but I hardly think zucchini bread -- especially with cocoa and chocolate chips, which is the way we like it -- would fit the bill.

But there was the zucchini on the table, and I couldn't very well tell him to return it.

Now, the food processor I use for normal, everyday use for the two of us was woefully inadequate for this monster. Plus, it didn't have a grater. And I wasn't about to spend my remaining four months of Christmas shopping days grating this zucchini by hand. I knew I had to dig out the Super Deluxe Monster Food Processor, which compared with the little one is like a military humvee and a matchbox car. My little food processor has two features: chop and grind. The big processor performs every possible maneuver that can be done to food, including packaging the food and sending it (although overseas requires a special attachment).

I reminded myself that I am an intelligent human being. I have a master's degree. How hard could it be to figure out how to grate zucchini? After reading the entire manual, 472 pages -- in three languages -- I knew just how hard it was.

Absolutely, unarguably impossible.

The zucchini would drop down the little chute, which it was supposed to do, but then just ride around and around on top of the grating disk, which it was not supposed to do.

I was sorely tempted to feed the manual into the processor. Hearing my mutterings and threats -- which wasn't hard; I'm sure the whole neighborhood could hear them -- Joe ventured into the kitchen to see what was wrong. He is a brave man.

And here is where the unfair part came in. My husband, despite spending far less time in the kitchen than I, and spending far fewer hours poring over cookbooks and baking tips and new recipes and gadgets designed to put one's cooking on par with the professionals -- as far as I know, he has never pored over these things -- immediately picked up a little plunger thing and started feeding the zucchini in. The zucchini obediently went through the grater and into the bowl, emerging in perfect strands.

In fact, he was having so much fun with the processor that he would have grated the entire zucchini had I not wailed at him to give me a turn.

He reluctantly turned it over to me. Clearly he didn't think I could be trusted with an instrument of such precision.

I knew the explanation. This was a tool, something that came with a plug and a motor, and therefore qualified as a man's toy. It was not something to be tinkered with by a mere woman, even if it was disguised as a kitchen instrument. Somewhere in those 472 pages of instructions, I felt that there should have been a disclaimer about this:

"WARNING: This appliance contains a motor, which will attract any male within a 50-yard radius, who will want to run it for the sheer joy of operating a motorized machine. This may lead to his shredding everything in the house, including your marriage license. We are in the process of developing an 'Emergency Husband Switch-Off Device.' Preliminary testing indicates that it unintentionally switches off all husbandly functions, including fixing the porch, changing the light bulb, and killing spiders; therefore more research is obviously required. In the meantime, we advise you to operate this machine only when your husband is otherwise engaged, preferably in an activity that requires him to wear noise-reducing headphones."

Although my womanly pride was sorely bruised, I came to realize that maybe this was not such a bad situation after all. Maybe, like a certain male relative -- who is an AMAZING chef but seems to possess little interest in other household endeavors, such as making the bed properly -- I need to play dumb and let my expert husband do the cooking.

My mother never quoted the maxim "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade." But I have a little maxim of my own: "When life hands you zucchinis, let your husband make zucchini bread." Or at least run the food processor.