[Originally posted on LA Times HS Insider on March 22, 2021. Edited]
Spaghetti is the shape of a pasta. But growing up, spaghetti was an event.
With garlic bread and simple arguments over who got ahold of the controller and remote, we understood it as c'mote. The red sauce and noodle twirled up on my fork, completely missing my mouth with a lack of grace and for it, earnest happiness.
But as the years grew, I went from calling spaghetti to pasta specifying the sauce with pesto, alfredo, or carbonara. Choosing the pasta with the choices of tortellini, linguini or penne. This is for sure what Aladdin was referring to when talking about a whole new world. But then you get accustomed to it, and the new world is just a world. Only it is remembered as naivete for it to ever have been new. Like we are entitled to becoming accustomed.
Beyond that there are noodles, fitting in a similar category. Peanut noodles, jade noodles, soba noodles, that I eat with a napkin placed carefully on my lap. Only because I was once instructed to. Now I do it because with my practice, I've learned to mean it. Now we have cold kinds of pasta for hot summer days and warm kinds of pasta for comfort and family gatherings.
But as we get older, we refer to garlic bread and pasta as carbs. We chalk it up to naivete for having not always known that. For not prioritizing our health over our wants. Every practice of ours from wandering, embracing eyes soon become chalked up to naivete for having not always known that.
Now spaghetti is nothing but a distasted meal for your picky kid and as beautiful as all of these kinds of pasta get, I sometimes long for Spaghetti.
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