Many years ago, when I was an adult, but still young, my roommate and I were throwing a party.

One thing we needed was an astounding amount of grated cheese. This was before you could buy your cheese already grated.

In one of the boxes that had come from one of our mothers was a tiny, rudimentary food processor. It was nothing like the giant one my mother used on a regular basis, being a wizard in the kitchen, but it would do to grate the cheese.

I sliced the cheese into blocks that would fit in the removable plastic part and was merrily grating along when my friend Brantley arrived.

Brantley has always been more sophisticated than I.

He surveyed the situation and asked, “why are you putting cheese in the bean grinder?”

I stopped what I was doing and asked, “Bean grinder? Why would you grind beans? (the you dumbass was implied). Just mash them with a fork.”

He didn’t say another word, and I finished grinding the several pounds of cheese.

I just went in the kitchen for something, and my own bean grinder is sitting on the counter, a reminder that I was not always the woman of the world you are accustomed to.