My very good friend M. C. is one of the dearest, brightest people I have ever had the pleasure of having in my life. She has spent most of her life lovingly caring for others. Although a great cook, she has never really ventured out into foods from other ethnic groups such as Mexican, Italian, Chinese, etc.

She loves to have company and always serves an abundance of wonderful and unusual dishes. For one such occasion M.C. had made a casserole dish using corn tortillas and had tortillas left over. She asked Gene for ideas as how she could use them up. He told her he likes to heat them with cheese on them, roll them up and eat them as a snack. He neglected to say that he puts them on a plate in the microwave with the cheese on top to heat them.

A few days later hardly able to contain her laughter she told us that she had decided to try it, but that it had not gone so well. She had taken a stiff cold tortilla out of the fridge and put it in her toaster to heat it. Needless to say, the tortilla softened up and slithered down into the toaster like a cooked strand of spaghetti. Then the challenge, of how to remove it, came. It was at this point she was grateful she had not put the cheese on it too. M. C. and I have shared many wonderful and poignant times together and I will occasionally share them in my blogs. The importance of the ability to laugh at oneself when confronted with one’s human fallibilities is something I try to carry over into the classroom.