bitter cuttings.

I just realized that it's been about a year and a half, and I am still angry about the cutting board.

I had this great little cutting board, see, about yay long and half-a-yay wide. Small enough to stash somewhere and be unobtrusive, small enough to whip out when you only needed to cut a tomato. It was the single girl's cutting board, and I liked it a lot. It was real wood, and I found it at a yard sale for a quarter at a time when I just happened to be looking for a nice little cutting board. It's so rare that the yard sales give you what you're looking for. More often, they give you what you never knew you needed.

When I moved out of the commune, I took my marvelous little cutting board to my new place. I received a friendly call from one of my ex-roommates a couple of weeks later. I think we talked about something else, and the subject of the cutting board was really more of an "oh, by the way..." thing. She told me that I had her cutting board.

Um, no. I didn't.

Sure I did, she said. Remember? It's little and brown and has that great little handle, so convenient. I must have accidentally packed her cutting board with my things.

Um, no. I packed my cutting board with my things.

She insisted that it was hers. She even told me this elaborate story about how she got it from her dad when he remarried and combined households. I thought that story was a dirty trick, saying that the cutting board had come to her as a result of a situation that had caused her not more than a little emotional strife. This is why you should never get divorced: someone is going to get screwed out of a cutting board someday.

I argued with her a little. I was just about to point out the small rectangular mark left by the price tag from where I had bought it for a quarter at the yard sale. The scar of the price tag was my proof and my downfall. As soon as I thought about playing my trump card, I realized that it was just a stupid quarter and that I should get over it.

Sometimes I go out of my way to be the bigger person, just to teach myself a lesson. The cutting board incident was one of those times. But because I had not really learned the lesson, I delivered the cutting board by leaving it on her doorstep one day when I knew she wasn't going to be home. There's only so much injury I can take.

I saw her a couple of weeks later, and to my chagrin, she brought up a conversation about the cutting board, thanking me for dropping it by. I remarked at what a great little cutting board it was, and she emphatically agreed. "And," she added, "that's why I was so pissed off when my roommate left it in the wet sink under some dishes and it got all warped. I had to throw it out!"

Go ahead. I dare you to let that happen to you, and you try and not be a little bitter about it over a year later. It can't be done.