We survived the first week of school! On Friday afternoon I picked up the kiddos and I unloaded everything out of their book bags. I went through my 4th grader's folder and looked at her calendar of assignments. Already the month of August is filled up with upcoming quizzes and work to be done. Fourth grade is the real deal. Some of the days said, "No Math" and "No Science" with little sad faces drawn next to them. I was very confused. I called my daughter over, "Honey, why did you draw sad faces on the days that you have no homework?" She very sweetly said, "I want to do math and homework so I can learn and get smarter." Those words actually escaped her mouth. She takes after her mother.
The funny thing about having kids is that you watch what they do and you refer back to your own childhood. I sat there with her open assignment book and thought about when I was a kid. I loved doing homework. I would get home and pour a large glass of iced tea and sit at the corner of the dining room table and unpack all my books. I would get out my assignment book and do homework for hours. I now realize that it had nothing to do with my love for learning, but rather because I am an anxious control freak. I liked to have things done so I didn't have to worry. I liked the idea of having tasks to do and crossing them off my list. I was a good student and I always tried to get my work done and do it well. Expect for one time. I asked the kids if they wanted to hear a funny story about homework. They humored me.
This is a true story. I was a junior in high school and for Biology class we had to do a research project that we were supposed to work on the whole semester. It was worth half of our grade that semester or something crazy like that. We had to submit a proposal and I decided for my project I was going to make cheese and write a paper about the science behind it. My proposal was accepted but for some reason I didn't get started right away. I was distracted. I had just started dating my husband so I was young, stupid and in love and not in the mood to make cheese.
Well, here I was the week before the project was due and I was freaking out. You can't just make cheese on a whim. I was reading about how to make cheese and I was realizing I had to come up with an alternate plan. I couldn't just buy cheese, that would be much too obvious. I decided to make a cheese concoction. I got a sauce pan out and I pulled anything cheese related out of the fridge. I poured in some milk, yogurt, cream cheese, Parmesan cheese, sliced cheese and heated it up- but it was so gloopy so I added some flour and a little bit of salt until it was a goopy, doughy, cheesy, smelly ball. I didn't have any cheese cloth and I needed that for realistic, home made cheese. I did have an old pair of panty hose though - so I poured the gloopy, cheese ball into the foot of my old panty hose and I hung it up with a bowl under it and squeezed the moisture out.
While this fake, nasty cheese ball was hanging in my old panty hose foot - I was busy writing my paper about the science behind cheese making and I even designed a poster about how to make cheese (the legitimate way). The day the project was due, I took the smelly cheese mixture out of my panty hose and into a tupperware container. It lived in my locker all day without refrigeration. I carried it to class and waited to be called up.
The teacher called my name and I had to come up and present my project to the class. I walked through my poster and how cheese is made. I answered questions. I felt like a fake. At the end of my project presentation, my biology teacher asked to see the cheese. He looked at it, he smelled it. I held my breath and my heart beat a mile a minute. He looked up, "Can I try it?" I was stuck - I couldn't tell him it wasn't real cheese and it was gross and had been in the foot of my panty hose. It was worth half my grade. I watched him scrape some of the nasty cheesy dough ball and put it in his mouth. I was freaked out, he was going to know it wasn't real. "This is really good." He then invited the class to come try it. I swear to God, this happened. I watched in horror as 10-15 of my class mates lined up for a taste. They scraped at it with a spoon and consumed my cheese ball. Mr. M said, "Are you going to have some?" I was like, "No, I already had some when I made it." I am a liar.
I got an A for my research project. I need to answer for that event when I get to heaven some day. Moral of the story - don't procrastinate. My daughter laughed and laughed. "Mom, I will never try to make cheese."
No comments:
Post a Comment