Saturday, June 19, 2010

fans, pants and trying to appear smarter than you are

"I've told you a million times not to touch the fan. If you stick your finger in there and the tip gets chopped off, I am not going to take you to the doctor to get it sewn back on," I said to Donovan, after which Laura, on the phone, pronounced me the best mom ever.

I hadn't even told her about how I had pantsed (how DO you spell that, anyway?) Donovan the night before as we ran up the stairs. What? He was ahead of me. And wearing elastic-waisted shorts. And cackling maniacally. It was like my fingers took on a life of their own and with a swift tug, the shorts dropped to his ankles. "MOM!" he gasped between the hysterical laughing that now consumed his body as he rolled on the floor, "Why did you DO that?!"

I shrugged and ran past him. "Because you were ahead of me and I knew you'd be a good sport about it." Later I educated my children about the act of pantsing someone. This was quickly followed by the admonition that they NOT pants anyone else. That it is, actually, only a privilege earned by moms and dads and do NOT do this to your friends or enemies or even parents.

For the next couple days, periodically Donovan has said something like, "Remember when you pantsed me?" or "Why did you pants me, again?" All while a huge grin is spread across his face. This is the fun part of teaching your kids stuff. I'll probably wait several years to teach him the fine art of pantsing (well, it's rather more a tugging at the bottom of their shorts as a distraction) an opponent on the other soccer team. Probably.

All this talk of pants and fans - I'm hot and tired from the three 1-hour sessions I just taught on food at a Young Adult Conference here (I think they asked me on a dare or something?). I don't really know what happened there. Food. I talked about food, spices, herbs, cooking for the love of it, loving what you cook, and a few quick meal ideas. Some highlights: the guy who asked if I've ever eaten rattlesnake ("No. I also haven't eaten yak. It's on my to do list."); the fact that in 50 minutes I still couldn't talk fast enough to get all my words out; the excessive sweating; that I might have used a decade's quota of the word "delicious" in one hour; and that I may or may not have said, "Just because you're single doesn't mean you can't eat a whole cheesecake." In my defense, I quickly amended that to be "MAKE a whole cheesecake" but let's face it, the meaning remains the same. (my point was that you shouldn't discount making something like a cheesecake because it's huge - it freezes beautifully, and everyone deserves cheesecake)

Anyway, I think it went well. At least it's over and a couple people even came up and said they enjoyed it. One guy: "I even took home ec in high school and I learned more in the last hour here than I did the entire year in high school!" (note to self: look into teaching home ec) It was a good experience. And now I will go sit in front of a fan, pants optional, cheesecake mandatory. Unfortunately I don't have cheesecake. Breyer's (or is it Dreyer's?) pomegranate frozen fruit bar it is!

1 comments:

Lisa said...

In my home ec class, we made instant pudding. No joke.