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Saturday, September 3, 2016

Answering the call of the Wild Baked Bean




I’ve been taking a commercially baked, delicious oat bar thing to school to eat at morning tea, but as the kilos have continued to pile on to my girth, the virtuous oat bar has somehow become the scapegoat for my continued weight gain (it's not the vat of wine I drink every day… oh no, never that).

So instead of ingesting the highly processed, highly calorie laden and sugar-filled, oat bar every day, I’ve been eating a small can of baked beans instead.

Fibre… you know.

It was a shock to realise that even a very tiny can of baked beans has a thunderously, gaseous side effect and I’m guessing that at my advanced age, the farty effect is even more exaggerated.

Shortly after morning tea yesterday, as I was meandering past a group of grade ones during their dance lesson, I accidentally dropped a very robust and loud, fluffy monster.

Thinking like a ninja, I spun around quickly in feigned outrage, “Who was that???” I glared at the small children in mock horror.

The grade one-ers all looked at one another with suspicion, nudging each other in the ribs with their chubby elbows and staring at the skinny boy wearing glasses who was sitting in the corner by himself, the kid everyone always pick on, the odd boy who never gets chosen as a partner and picks his nose and has facial tics.

It MUST have been him who so rudely farted.

Of course, I let the innocent boy take the fall for my fluff. He looked like a patsy to tell the truth. He was asking for it, really.

You know I’m joking. Please don’t ring the Teacher Registration Board.
It’s very difficult teaching dance lessons when you’re full of wind. The knee bends, the jumps, the kicking the legs in the air… these actions avidly invite the random and explosive expulsion of excess air.

If it had been grade sixes I might not have got away with my subterfuge… but grade one-ers will be sucked in by anything.

The truth is, they giggled a lot and I suppose they did suspect it was me who fluffed, but because they’re grade ones they forgot about it ten seconds after it happened.

I could teach grade ones the same lesson every day for a year and they wouldn’t even notice anything unusual.

I had quite a few boys sidle up to me during the last three weeks and whisper in anguished voices, “Mrs Poinker, sorry, but dancing’s not my thing. I’d rather not participate, thanks.”

“You don’t like dancing? Well that won’t get you many girlfriends later in life!” I’ve quipped back.

“I don’t like girls,” has been the standard response. “I never want a girlfriend.”

I’m sure they’ll change their mind about liking girls but the terror and shame with which some of the boys approached the idea of dancing was enlightening.

I remember showing a grade four class the film “Oliver Twist’ once and one boy in my class almost had a fit because there were people dancing in the movie. He was truly tortured by musical theatre. He was in physical pain watching it. At one stage he started crying in frustration and torment.



Why do some males, young and old, hate the thought of dancing so much?

Even Scotto hates dancing. He pretended to like it when we first met but now refuses to even consider it.

Any ideas?

Also, do baked beans have the same effect on you?