Mozzarella Season

Mozzarella is a surprisingly stubborn and difficult to work with cheese. Based on the Italians I'm close to, an obstinate Italian cheese should not shock me. However, mozzarella has such a mild flavor that I expect it to be more compliant with my wishes.
My first day at the cheese house (back in September of 2008) we stretched mozzarella. By the end of the day I thought it would be my last day at the cheese house. The Head Cheese (known as Marge to some) hated to stretch mozzarella. This hatred was directly proportional to her inability to master the skill. She had to import a teacher to show us how to stretch - The Cheese Nazi. We would later discover that The Cheese Nazi was harsh about everything, leading to names such at The Display Nazi, The Market Nazi, and finally just plain The Nazi. Suddenly the name seemed much more offensive than when Seinfeld popularized it, so she is no longer the anything Nazi. Now we just call her Gilligan (another story for another time).
Gilligan addressed the class of four painfully challenged cheese makers with a tone that could only be described as condescending. I worked furiously with my first ball, following every contradicting instruction: Push up from the bottom of the ball while pulling down and around the top, making sure to build one even skin around the ball. Rotate the ball as you work, but don't move the ball very much. Let it sit in hot water long enough that it is easy to work with. If your water is too hot you will ruin the cheese. Make sure that you get a lot of moisture out, but don't squeeze the mozzarella ball.
After fifteen minutes, my mess of curd was worse than when I started and I was certain that if you looked at a cross-section of my brain it would have deteriorated to the point that it would resemble the mush in my hand. Gilligan took my pathetic attempt out of my hand and effortlessly whipped it into the form of a perfect mozzarella ball.
At this point I feel that it is necessary to interject that educational theory does not permit a teacher to simply tear down his/her students. The educator must value the student and accept his/her contribution prior to gently guiding the student to a more acceptable answer. Apparently Gilligan has never taken an education course.
After Gilligan's "tender" dose of criticism, I set out for attempt number two. The result from this attempt slightly differed from the first: Gilligan stepped in sooner. An hour later the score stood at 6 balls started, 0 completed by me. As Gilligan took the sixth ball from my hand, I was curtly dismissed to wash dishes, a task that I was capable of completing correctly. To my delight, that was the last stretching of mozzarella for the 2008 season.
On opening day of the 2009 mozzarella season I awoke with a degree of trepidation. My father added fuel to the fire by making the remark, "Mozzarella, huh. You're not very good at that, are you?" As the morning progressed and I settled into my routine at the cheese house, The Head Cheese and I worked ourselves into a frenzy, much like a locker room scene before a big game. We weren't going to let mozzarella embarrass us this season - not in our cheese house!
Well, we've won some and we've lost some this season. It was a rocky start, but we've looked like a different team since the All-Star Break. Maybe next year the team with be strong enough to go into October.
This week we hung up our stretching gloves for the season. We had a rookie with us: my mother. Gilligan wasn't there, so last years students became the teachers. I gently warned my mother that stretching mozzarella is a painstaking, infuriating , I daresay nearly impossible task.
Turns out my mother has a great aptitude for stretching mozzarella. I think it was her teachers.