posted by JDM : 10:18 AM
Last fall, my employer chose to sink our floating holiday on
Columbus Day 2005.
So I have a day off today and nothing to do except reminisce about my first-grade class' Friday Surprise activity in honor of Columbus Day. Each student had to bring a bar of Ivory soap and a butter knife to class. Even though the kindergarteners routinely strapped nuclear devices to their Velcro sneakers,
Einstein Elementary didn't have metal detectors in 1987.
Our teacher told us to make a Nina, Pinta or Santa Maria out of soap. Armed with their butter knives, most kids quickly carved pointy bows, stabbed toothpicks with paper sails attached into the soap and watched their ships
float in a bowl filled with water.
I struggled, though. My parents sent a regular table knife with me, and it was too thick to carve the soap. My knife slipped off the soap every time I tried to remove the corners.
I felt like I belonged in a wheelchair like J.J., the special ed. kid who stole my ruler one day. I wished I had an awesome knife and accent like the guy in the
Irish Spring commercials.
That Friday Surprise was the worst until the spring when the teacher
scrambled eggs, fried some ham, dyed both green and served them after we read
Green Eggs and Ham. I was a picky eater and didn't like eggs. I was a picky reader, too. I thought Dr. Seuss wrote facile, druggy nonsense, so I went on a brief hunger strike to protest the monosyllabic rhymes involving foxes in socks, cats in hats and Grinches ruining holidays for Whos.
Have fun at work and school today, kids.