six words

Hate to cook; eat chocolate instead.

In recent years, I've started off my freshman comp classes with this mini-assignment: Write your story in six words. The "memoir" can reflect your personality, the present moment, or what's been on your mind lately. Funny, soulful, weird, whatever. The exercise is meant to break the ice and make writing immediate, accessible, and potentially even evocative. 

(This is by no means my invention. According to their website, SMITH Magazine first started the six-word memoir project in November 2006. You can read about it here: http://sixwordmemoirs.com/.) 

So my contribution, the memoir I share with students, is this: Hate to cook; eat chocolate instead. 

The beauty of the genre is that it says so much more than it says. These six words reveal not only that I'm lazy about cooking, I'm so lazy I can't be bothered to write more than six words about my laziness. So lazy I don't even use the pronoun "I." 

I wish I did like to cook. I envy people who get excited by Korean barbecue, designer cocktails, or grilled pizza. I'd like to benefit from the nutritional explosion that is kale or mustard greens. I'd like to find bliss at the farmer's market and fulfillment in that first taste of whatever's on the stove. But even though I wander the grocery store aisles hungry and willing to respond to whatever calls to me, I leave with a single sweet potato and strawberries. Maybe a frozen meal of curried peas and dal, if I'm feeling adventurous and/or desperate. And I remind myself that just about anything goes well with red wine.