Django: ProgrammingError: Can't Adapt

I find I get an error like this far too often, but not often enough to remember why I got the problem the previous time. For my own sanity, I'm blogging about it for reference. The error itself is not very descriptive:

Exception Type: ProgrammingError Exception Value: can't adapt

Unless there is something I'm forgetting, it seems 100% of the time it has been a simple error. I use the get_or_create function to retrieve a model, but I don't account for the "created" variable. So then I try to use the tuple as a model object somewhere and it throws this error.

For example, here is the wrong way:

person = Person.objects.get_or_create(first_name="Dustin", last_name="Davis")
print person.first_name

And now for the correction:

person, created = Person.objects.get_or_create(first_name="Dustin", last_name="Davis")
print person.first_name