National Nutrition Month

It started last Thursday morning when Kyotaro came home with a note stapled to his notebook: "Make a headress of fruits and vegetables. Required on Monday, July 26." My first two reactions, more or less simultaneous, were, "In a country where many people are short of food it seems inappropriate to be wasting fruits and vegetables to make a headdress," and "Ironic that they finally planned ahead enough to give us adequate time to prepare a project that will have to be done at the last minute because it's perishable." I added a question under the note, "Are we celebrating Carmen Meranda Day?" even though I knew that this was probably too obscure a reference to be understood, not because of cultural differences but because of age differences. I didn't get a response for several days. So that's how I came to be out in a rainstorm with a fever on Sunday evening, maiming perfectly good fruit trees and ripping up newly planted sweet potato vines.
On Monday afternoon the kids said that Kyo's teacher had laughed at the headdress I made for him and that I had to make another. Jhulana tried to draw a picture to show me what they wanted but I couldn't make sense of it. I spent about two hours unsuccessfully trying to make a wire framework to support a paper mango before I figured out what Jhulana had drawn, which was fortunate because she and Shintaro had informed me that they also needed headdresses. I worked for a couple of hours drawing fruits and vegetables on Oslo paper which, I had learned from past experience, is heavy, thick, bond paper, for Shintaro's headdress. Fortunately Dhay, the Supermaid, knew what they wanted and showed me how to make a headband out of newspaper and then draw a single fruit or vegetable on Oslo paper, cut it out and glue it to the headband. That, apparently, corresponds to the local understanding of the word "headress." Dhay made one for Jhulana and one for Miguel, who remembered when he got home and saw what we were doing that he also needed a headdress. She covered the newspaper with the Oslo paper and then drew and colored vines and leaves around the headband so that the whole thing was very attractive. Then Jhulana didn't like the one Dhay had made for her and insisted that she make another. I wanted to spank her spoiled little butt but Dhay made another (I think she was enjoying it.) while Shin and I were coloring his headdress. I glued Velcro to the Oslo paper instead of trying to make a headband. I also, once I got over the frustration of wasting so much time making the headdress of real fruits and vegetables for Kyotaro, started on a new paper headdress for him.
That was Monday. I got up at 3 AM on Tuesday to finish Kyo's headdress only to discover that it had disappeared overnight, so I made an entirely new one and colored it and attached Velcro fasteners. I finished up just in time for him to take it to school and he was so taken with it that he insisted on wearing it to school.
Tuesday afternoon I got a response from Kyo's teacher to my note: "Nope. We're celebrating National Nutrition Month." This was followed by a new set of instructions on bringing "nutritious snacks" to school on Wednesday to share with a classmate. The other kids came home with similar last-minute instructions. They also informed me that Shintaro's teacher wanted us to make him a new headdress because the one I made for him had "too many fruits and not enough vegetables." I've been devoting every available minute to helping Shin learn how to write his numbers and letters forward instead of backward and some twenty-two year old obsessive-compulsive twit of a teacher insists that I take time to re-do a headdress because it didn't conform to her non-specific expectations! I was going to make one with a cutout of a single large green erect okra, with a border at the base suggestive of the back of a hand with folded fingers, and instruct Shintaro to respond to any question about "Why okra?" with "Because a finger isn't a vegetable." Fortunately Dhay the Supermaid made one with an eggplant and I just spent my time helping Shin with his homework.
The week before all this happened a big bag of Oreos, Chips Ahoy and other sweet snacks reserved for school had mysteriously disappeared. I told the kids that those snacks had been intended to last all this week and I wasn't going to buy more. So I sent them off with peanut butter or cheese sandwiches on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday I sent them all off with carrot sticks. I discovered just before they left that only Kyo was supposed to bring nutritious snacks on Wednesday, while Shin and Jhulana were to bring them on Thursday and Miguel on Friday. It was too late to do anything about it at that point and anyway it emphasized the point about not buying them sweet snacks this week. Kyo brought back his carrot sticks untouched and we ate them for lunch. Jhulana and Miguel also brought theirs home uneaten and I put them in the ref and snacked on them for a couple of days. I found Shin's in his bookbag on Thursday but the heat had done a job on them and I gave them to the chickens. So much for 'nutritious snacks.'
On Wednesday afternoon Junko made a special trip to the grocery store to buy 'nutritious snacks' for the kids to share at school, mostly milk and "NutriBars" which all the kids took to school on Thursday morning. So much for emphasizing the point about not buying sweet snacks this week. Jhulana came home on Thursday with some taffy candies, explaining that all of the snacks had been put on a table, that she was the last to get to pick and the taffies were all that were left. So much, again, for 'nutritious snacks.' Also on Thursday, yesterday, Miguel informed me that his teacher had said, among other things, that the sharing was going to be with her, not with classmates, that she was very specific that she "didn't want anything black or rotten" and that if there were two items, she wanted the biggest. I sent him off this morning with two NutriBars, two cartons of milk and two bananas. Miguel has not established a reputation for honesty or for accurate recounting of facts so I am waiting to hear the outcome of this final saga of "National Nutrition Month." I'm not sure how much respect for nutrition the kids have gained but Dhay the Supermaid has discovered an artistic ability that she never appreciated she had. And I'm making notes for the next parent-teacher conference. I hope I have enough time left after I communicate how much I detest the "science" book they're using. But that's another letter.
God bless
D


© October 1, 2010