Pork... It's the Other White Meat

You know when kids say or do things that give other people the wrong impression of your home life?

Yesterday, Lily had a homework assignment about nutrition. She was asked to draw a picture of her family eating a healthful meal. The sheet also included instructions to the parent. I was supposed to write down her description of the picture and label each of the healthful foods she drew. Also, for reasons unknown to me, I had to sign MY name at the bottom of the page. I think now it was so they can use the document against me in family court, but I digress.

Lily started out by drawing a large table with about 8 legs. Then she drew the four of us around the table. It was drawn as if she took a picture of the table, so Jim's back was to the viewer, I was drawn across the table from him and she and Jack were sitting at each end. I was pretty impressed with her attempt at realistic perspective, actually. She apologized to me because she drew my head "way small." She also felt she'd draw herself "ugh" and compensated by drawing her legs all the way down to the ground to show she was leaving the table. I'm not sure how that made her less "ugh" but that was her explanation.

Then she drew four platters on the table, each with a different food on it. As a final touch, she drew our chandelier over the table with lots of rays coming from the bulbs to show it was very bright.

Then it was my turn to ask her to describe the picture. I obviously don't have the picture here right now (they've probably turned it over to DSS), but I will quote it to the best of my memory:

"This is a picture of my family eating a healthful and delicious meal. The Grimsas is very bright so that we don't eat anything we're allergic to. Mama, Papa, Jack and Lily. Don't eat a healthful meal too much, at least once a day."

You are probably wondering what a Grimsas is. It happens to be the name IKEA gave the chandelier over our dining room table. It kind of stuck with us, and we refer to that light as the Grimsas. The "grim" portion of the name is actually kind of fitting, because the previous owner placed the wiring off center in the room. If we forget and center the table to the room, someone always bashes their head on the Grimsas. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, Lily's picture.

Right. The very last thing I had to do was label the "healthful food" she drew. She told me the four platters contained ham, sausage, salad and a banana.

As I was filling out the sheet per the instructions, I was flashing forward to what the teacher was going to think when she saw it. Lily has given her the impression that we load up our table with pork products, that we only eat a healthful meal once a day, and that we need to keep our lights very bright to avoid eating things we're allergic to...because we're recklessly putting out foods containing dangerous allergens every night. AND...she's referring to the lamp by a strange name as if it's alive.

I would like to state for the record that I am not a big fan of the pork products. I cannot recall a single time we've ever served a ham in our home. I can count the number of times we've served sausage on one hand. We actually eat a lot of chicken and beef. Also, none of us are allergic to any foods. Lily used to get a rash on her face when she ate raw tomatoes, but she outgrew that. I assure you, if we were allergic to foods, Jim wouldn't be serving them out at the table and forcing us to poke through the food under the brightly lighted Grimsas to avoid them.

If you're looking for me, I'll be sitting by the phone waiting for the Department of Social Services to call.