"Chips" Chips? Really? Chips?? oh my lord. Chips! On national radio, midday, I blew my cover completely. Neal Conan's Talk of the Nation last Thursday, September 27, 2012, discussed the new school lunch federal guidelines that call for healthier food and smaller portions. Stopped at a red light when they delivered the phone number, I decided to dial in. This exact topic had made its way into my home, not as a policy discussion, but in my children's bird-like cries "I'm hungry, mom!" I hadn't paid too much attention, honestly. I'd simply given them a bigger after school snack, and when that didn't help, sent them to school smuggling snacks. "Mom, they don't allow snacks. I'll get in trouble." "Luke, you must eat or your brain will shut down. If they give you grief, I will get medical permission to send these with you." He had been complaining that he couldn't pay attention the last 1/2 hour before lunch. (all of us get lightheaded, cranky, and monster-like if we don't eat at regular intervals) "Dear school, my son turns green and starts throwing desks and smashing pencils when he doesn't eat. In light of this, please allow him to consume this snack. Thank you."
Much of my experience the past five years has been a strange combination of studying policy in the books, while living the exact circumstances described as hypothetical case studies. For example, interning at South Carolina Legal Services, I attend a day long legal education program about public benefits, including day care vouchers, food stamps, medicaid (this supplementing my Poverty Law class, which required a final paper on SNAP benefits.) Upon arriving home that same day, open my own food stamp appointment waiting in the mail, after picking up my youngest child from unsubsidized day care, an incredible expense which consumed more than half my income.
Honestly, I have not sent the kids to school with a bag of chips once. But, when he asked the question, my mind did this: "out of time, brush the teeth, where's your shoes? shove the homework in the bag, have your jacket?, go back and make your bed! snack? you need a snack? ummm errr what's the easiest food imagineable to grab and go? CHIPS! yes that's it! CHIPS!" So, I answered in a total false claim "CHIPS!" and then I chuckled. Because I lied. Because I blew it. (because a stream of healthy foods celery and peanut butter, homemade granola bars, cheese sticks, go-gurts, veggie sticks came to mind as soon as i delivered the last "sssss" of the word chips) Because all the food experts gathered in his studio collectively cringed, and then nodded silent "yeps. see? that's why america's kids are obese and stupid. idiot moms in arkansas sending chips."
But, I'm no fool. Truth be told, I send them to school armed in the fight against hunger with....SLIM JIMS!
Do you feel vindicated? Well, I personally am still appalled, unless you bribe me with some chips!!
ReplyDeleteI will make home made chips with zero trans fat peanut oil, salted from ocean sand i personally distilled, from tortillas i ground from the milled corn i personally gathered on a field trip with the children to mexico where they learned spanish in a native dialect and planted seeds to repopulate the earth's dwindling food resources, hauled by a mule donated by us to be milked for generations in the third world, after i hand slice each tortilla over the open flame lit by cow dung to conserve resources, then will send the kids on their bycicles 1000 miles to deliver the chips to you to counteract any overconsumption of calories they may have indulged in sneaking twinkies while i wrote this.
DeleteWell, if it's not too much trouble . . .
Deletejajaja! ay dios mio!
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