A Man Ahead of His Time

I am going to tell you something important right now, and I expect you will have one of only two responses. The information? Several years ago, I invented the spaghetti burrito. Your response? Either, "Yeah, sure you did!" or, "What's a spaghetti burrito?"
If yours is the latter response, let me redirect your thoughts so that you might ask the more pertinent question. An understanding of what a spaghetti burrito is is less important than an appreciation for what it does. I mean, sure it appears to be the simple result of placing homemade spaghetti (although other types of pasta are theoretically possible) on a tortilla, grating cheese over the top of it, and wrapping the whole thing up as you would a standard burrito for the purpose of eating it with your hands. True, this makes it taste better, as it is a well known fact in much of the world that food eaten with the hands (as opposed to silverware, chopsticks, shovels, etc.) tastes better. However, this is not the true function (and thus, genius) of the spaghetti burrito. To appreciate this, one must understand the dire situation which led to its discovery.
I have spent much of my adult life living as a bachelor of sorts. And a large portion of that coincided with being a student, and thus technically poor. Between being perpetually low on funds (as any student is), and rather lazy by nature, I struggled to summon the motivation to spend any more than the bare minimum time necessary to prepare meals. They say that you are what you eat. I am living proof that this is a lie, because if it were true I would undoubtedly resemble a plate of the cheapest spaghetti known to mankind. I ate the stuff as often as five times a week. For years. If anyone has eaten more of the stuff than me, I haven't met them. I mean, what could be easier? You boil pasta, drain the water, add a jar of sauce, and heat to taste. I only needed one pot so it was easy to clean up, and I could make enough food to last me for several meals.
You may be asking yourself, "So where did the burrito aspect come in?". The truth is that I didn't particularly care for spaghetti. You can imagine how hard it is to drum up enthusiasm for a meal when roughly 70% of time, it consists of the same thing. To keep up this pace (and thus keep my food budget low), I would treat myself to cookies afterwards. Now, those of you who know me know that I have a serious weakness for milk and cookies. Some people have alcohol, others cocaine. I have cookies and, for me, they are serious business. I have been known to polish off an entire bag of Oreos in a single sitting. I freakin' love the things, and so I made a deal with myself shortly after leaving home for college: I could eat all the cookies I wanted so long as I had a real dinner first. At first it was a challenge, as I would struggle to shovel fork fulls of spaghetti into my mouth one after another, all the while keeping my eye on the prize. Literally. I set the cookies on the countertop and stared, unblinkingly, at them while damned near choking myself with the spaghetti I had to get through in order to justify ripping into them.
So one day, a day like any other I should note, it occurred to me that I had a couple of tortillas in the fridge as well. In one of those cartoon moments when a light bulb suddenly beams to life over some dumbfounded fool's head, it suddenly occurred to me that I could probably eat the spaghetti faster if I could hold it in my hands. What better way to do so than wrapped up in a tortilla? Thus, genius was born. It worked! Suddenly, I could scarf down the equivalent of two plates of spaghetti (my usual fare) in almost half the time, toss the plate aside, and move on to the cookies. I was a rejuvenated man. I was still staying true to the original pact I had made with myself (dinner first, then cookies), but now I was actually enjoying it a bit because the tortilla gave the burrito a different (I daresay a better) flavor than just by itself.
I tell this story in the hopes that someday, when the spaghetti burrito becomes world-famous, you will remember that I invented it.
Now, I believe I left a half-opened bag of cookies on the counter.