First Grade and the Orange Marmalade

As the title of this story suggests, this tale takes place during the first grade. Travel with me now back to Mrs. Baker's first grade class at Kula Elementary School. There we were, the whole class sitting in a big circle waiting for Mrs. Baker to bring in a surprise she had been talking about all week. She took out a box of crackers and she put her hand in a small brown paper bag. As she pulled it out you could tell it was a jelly jar, but more specifically it was a jar of shining orange marmalade. I remember being really excited to try marmalade because I had gone for all 7 years of my life without trying it.

However, on this day I never got to try the orange marmalade. Mrs. Baker told us some horse poopy story about how we were a bad class, but how bad could first graders get in 91'? She went on and informed us that she wasn't going to let us have the orange marmalade. I remember her recklessly stuffing the marmalade back into the paper bag, and my memory fades after that. Mrs. Baker probably forgot it was her turn for snacks at the faculty meeting. Either that or she was an evil orange marmalade taunter.

Anyway, for years after that scaring experience, I've had adverse reactions to orange marmalade. I distinctly remember on a few occasions telling people I didn't like orange marmalade, but wasn't true because I hadn't ever tried it.

Eventually, I did finally have orange marmalade, and it is ever so delicious. I think I've cured my Pavlovian response to orange marmalade because today I bought a whole shiny jar of orange marmalade.

I thought maybe to get back at Mrs. Baker that I'll travel to an elementary school tomorrow taunting the first graders with the jar of orange marmalade but im sure the first graders of 08' would be too busy checking their email on their iphone* or something to care about a little old fashion orange marmalade.

I've also decided that "orange marmalade" makes for a good code phrase for something; I'm not sure what yet though.


*I wonder how many years it will take before iphone and ipod won't come up as spelling errors on spell check. I bet at least before my kids are in first grade.