Metaphors Do Not Work in Kindergarten.
When I harken back into the prehistoric days of my time as a student in elementary school, I vaguely remember that almost everyone brought their lunch. I don’t remember actually going to a place designated as a lunchroom. We ate in our classroom. Everyone had a bag lunch. The superhero lunch box was around but had not yet replaced the bagged lunch. P, b and j (peanut butter and jelly) was the most popular lunch. Milk came in a thermos, and we regularly swapped food and cookies.
It’s a different world now. Today’s lunch bringers are few in number because a very cheap lunch can now be purchased, either daily or weekly, in sets of twenty-five or even the life-time membership plan (slight embellishment).
One of the problematic offshoots the various school lunch buying plans is that some kids buy every day. It’s just easier for parents. The problem is that some days were hated by almost all lunch buyers. The dreaded “Fish Day” was one such lunch. Actually liking “Fish Day” was one of the universally accepted signs that you were weird.
So, I quickly learned various techniques to deal with the emotional drama that would regularly occur on the dreaded “Fish Day”. Such drama might include the full gamut of emotions from grumbling, to award winning tears, to threats on the life of the lunch lady.
The true motivation behind all my so-called techniques was to keep my lunch buyers distracted and heading to eat before they had time to voice their complaint. This rarely worked because dreaded “Fish Day” always had at least one hard case that required my attention.
On this particular day, I was announcing that today’s lunch was so good that it would grow hair on your chest. Please, I am a male teacher so I, naturally, assumed that I was expressing something desirable to all children.
My speech appeared to have worked. No drama that day! So, I leisurely drifted off to the teachers’ lounge for my own lunch.
About ten minutes later, one of the lunchroom monitors peeked into the teachers’ lounge with a very concerned look and signaled me to come quickly. I obediently followed her into the children’s lunchroom where I was politely deposited in front of one my kindergarten girls weeping uncontrollably.
For several minutes she could only point to her lunch and cry. I squatted down, gave her a hug. Finally, she calmed down enough to blurt out in a gush of tears, “My mommy told me that I had to eat all of my lunch today but I don’t want hair to grow on my chest.”
I’d like to say that from that day forward, I retired from my self-appointed role as lunch ambassador. But I didn’t, mostly because the lunch drama never stopped. As I mentioned before, I am a man, so learning a valuable lesson would require several more mistakes. I did refrain from using my “hair-on-the-chest” speech ever again. Although I am still not sure why it caused such a fuss. After all, it is does help in winter, just saying.
However, I did quickly get into the habit of amending all my clever cliches with “You know I’m just kidding, of course???”
Lesson Three (Part A) – PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO THE PERCEPTION OF THE VALUE OF HAVING HAIR ON ONES CHEST (Apparently, boasting of the possibility of eating one’s way to a hairy chest is not an exciting invitation to fifty percent of the population).
Rabbit Trail Lesson – Metaphors do NOT work in Kindergarten.