Playing Teacher

Today, I got to play teacher.

I know.

I am that anyway, right.

But I got to play teacher in the monster's school!
I think it was a fantastic idea. For teacher's day.

First, I went to a higher class. I chose the seventh grade. Just so they know a little bit about atoms and molecules and stuff like that. I made them a presentation. Oh! The kids are so enthu! And the duration of the class is so less! Although, it took no time to warm them up. With the surly teenagers that I usually encounter, it takes a while. These pre-teens were awesome! Of course, a few of them tried very hard to ensure that I did not cover any material that would show up on exams; and used age old techniques for time-wasting; the shortest guy in the class chose to sit in the last possible bench, etc. but still, overall fun! I loved it.

Next, I went to the monster's class. This is II Std. The husband also went; in fact, he went ahead. He played around with some math stuff with them. I bet he was a hoot and a hit. The teacher kept saying 'please don't lift up your hand, I feel the fan blades will cut your fingers' this is a good point. I had a friend, a very tallllll friend who cut his fingers on the blades of a fan in a train, once.

I took a bunch of props into the class. I had with me the following-

1. Empty dabba of Pringles sour cream and onion

2. Empty dabba of Pringles original

3. Cardboard carton of Chocos Planets and Stars

4. Blackcurrent flavour Kissan Jam Squeezee

5. Strawberry flavour Kissan Jam Squeezee

6. Act II Popcorn Sachet.

The inspiration for this is a stray conversation I had with the deshvaasi, recently.

"What do you need to make potato chips?" he asked me.

Well: potatoes, oil, salt.

He was trying to get his kid to stop obsessing on Pringles. Which really has some strange things in it.

csm has been shouting this from the rooftops for a while now.

"Watch the damn ingredients"

The kids in II std. did not know the word ingredients. They surely do not what the heck Monosodium Glutamate or Guanylate or INO320 or Red#2 are. I don't either. Hopefully, they will stop wanting to eat foods that contain wierd things such as potato and onion powder. Recently, perakath was talking about EGG powder. What the hell? I used to laugh at the Banana Milk Shake of McDonalds, you know that thing that has never seen a banana. Bananas are ubiquitous, chiquita. Milk, Banana, Sugar, this is all it takes to make Banana Milk Shake. Instead, you use

A Powder That Smells And Tastes Like Banana

Milk Powder

A Sugar-Like Substance

to make Banana Milk Shake.

The advantage is that when you have a nuclear holocaust, while my backyard banana tree will die an ignominious death, a cup of McDonald's Banana Milk Shake will survive. And feed the surviving cockroaches.

I did not talk about this stuff (practice what you preach or teach what you can practice), just the ingredients on those things listed above. Then we sang the Karadi Rhymes song about Sambar.

"Peel the onions, dice them small

Soak tamarind in water thats warm

Cook some dhal and mash it soft

Add some salt and turmeric strong.

Coconut and red chillies

Roast and grind them ever so fine

Add the paste to the dhal to simmer

Onion sambar ready for dinner!"

It was fun, overall. Hopefully it serves my vested purpose, which is to really get my girl to stop eating Kurkure (its the worst offender, really) and Aloo Bhujia. Its hard, this stuff. I don't want to be too crazy strict with these things either, it creates too much friction and on some levels I need the aversion for crap to come from within her and not be imposed by me. I definitely eat Lays Chips sometimes, my favourite flavour is the Sour Cream thing (it has the max. number of crappy things). It definitely hurts my stomach; and coats my tongue with something nasty enough that I don't overdo it or obsess about it. So I would not be able to PREVENT her from EVER eating these things. But, today, she did come back from school and say 'I don't want to eat stuff that has funny numbers as part of the ingredients list.' Lets see, maybe I did a good thing today!

[The teacher LOVED it. She promised to pick up on this theme later in the class]

[In the seventh std. class, one of the kids said, I wish we had not bothered to figure out how to make petrol. The world would have been a cleaner place then. Though it would have been difficult to get to Mahabalipuram!]