the infamous veggie poster
I had one returning student during my first session at CTY this year. I knew she had been slandering me when I overheard another student exclaim to the other: “…and she, like, makes you eat a whole PLATE of vegetables at lunch!”
This fearsome reputation is wholly unfounded. Really. But I suppose it takes its root in my one veggie rule: each student had to eat one serving of vegetable(s) at lunch. A few carrot sticks: sure! A small bowl of salad: absolutely. But the announcement of this rule on the first day of class always causes a mysterious keening noise to emit from the mouths of my students.
The first few days of lunch had you piling leaves of iceberg lettuce or tomatoes on your plates. Then there were the spud-lovers: a plateful of french fries drenched with ketchup (or alarmingly, mustard). One girl I sent back into the cafeteria for vegetables came back with a single, insolent kernel of corn.
You can’t say I didn’t warn you, kiddies. I explicitly said: “lack of veggies leads to bowel unhappiness.” You ignored me and continued to kick your neighbor’s chair instead. And the happy results? One of you had to use the bathroom over 5 times throughout the day (I knew because I had to stand in the hall and wait for you to finish). Another one of you turned green suddenly in the bookstore and begged to use the bathroom; after finishing, you came up to me and said, frankly: “that was good because I have been constipated for 3 days.”
So I created the veggie poster. No to potatoes (baked, fried, or tottified), corn, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, etc. Would anyone out there like to debate whether or not corn counts as a veggie? Because I got a lot of lip from the kids about that.
The end result was that I struck terror in the hearts of children. Which, after all, is what camp is all about.
I ::heart:: the veggie poster.
I myself let corn pass as a vegetable at CTY mealtimes because it is high in fiber and prevents bowel unhappiness, but I would be hard pressed to argue that it is taxonomically qualified to join the vegetable family. Also, my kids didn’t take me seriously as a Vegetable Enforcer because they figured out halfway through camp that I too am not a fan of vegetables.
Comment by Lindy — August 22, 2006 @ 9:29 am |
One of our UN instructors–you know who he is, Lindy–said that the kids could have as many sweets as they wanted as long as they had the equivalent number of vegetables. Ohhh my god. So you had kids with trays of pudding, cake, ice cream, soda, and a slice of tomato to accompany each sweet. Can you imagine the afternoon classes?
I felt really sorry for his TA–she could only look on in fear.
Comment by apricot — August 22, 2006 @ 9:55 am |