Don't do this Icebreaker

I went to a workshop today on Classroom Management. It was sponsored by the local board of Jewish education and was run by a well-known educator in town who also teaches graduate level courses in education at one of the local universities.

She introduced the session and asked us each to go around and introduce ourselves. And then she added, "And I'd like you to also tell the group what kind of fruit you're most like and why". NOT what fruit we like, but what fruit we are like. Seriously? This is like Barbara Walters asking Katherine Hepburn what kind of tree she would be.

It's one thing to do this in a group of people who know each other, and even then, it's a dumb ice breaker.

Two people said apples and two others said pomegranates. Someone said blueberries and then spent too much time telling us that they are good for you and that teaching is about passing along things to the students that are good for them. I really didn't need to know her that well. One person said persimmon, and there was a pear, and an orange. Just to be ornery, someone chose a tomato. The teacher described herself as a pineapple. Lovely. No one said a fruit with a pit, maybe because they were afraid others might interpret their choice to mean they really have a heart of stone. I was disappointed that no one chose coconuts or a durian. At least that would have been interesting.

As for me, I said a banana for no particular reason other than there was one in my bag.

Too Much Fruit

I found Pete's. It's a produce store on the South side of Milwaukee that is located in the Hispanic part of the city. That's only relevent because I think I was one of the only non-Spanish speaking customers in the store yesterday afternoon.

Now you might ask, why go all the way to the South side of town just to buy produce (let's be real, I live in Milwaukee - it's just not so far!). Well, first of all, this is the only real produce store in town. Other than this, it's the regular supermarkets or the co-op or Trader Joe's. Not that there's anything wrong with those places, but I was looking for a different kind of experience.

I found it.

They sell baskets of things (tomatoes, plums, peppers, grapes, in addition to other things I couldn't identify) for $2 or $3. Not per pound, but per basket. So you can't help but buy baskets of things. You can also buy them by the pound, but somehow it doesn't make sense to pay whatever the cost is per pound for plums when you can get 25 of them for $3, right?

And there in lies the problem.

I now have 25 plums. And a cantalope and a honeydew, some apples, maybe 15 tomatoes, and a bunch of peppers, an eggplant, some grapes, and a jicama. Yes, a jicama. And a husband who might eat an apple and who tasted a piece of honeydew this morning. I'm clearly in trouble.

The Wrong Flakes

I bought the wrong cereal yesterday. The tragedy is that I didn't notice until I'd already opened the box and the plastic bag (my rant on overpackaging will be saved for a future date!). At first, I thought there was really something wrong. Like bugs or something. There were colored pieces in the bag. Upon closer inspection, and noticing that some looked suspiciously like raspberries, I realized I'd bought the fruity cereal and not just the plain, boring kind that I'd hoped for.

And so, into the bowl it went, flakes and fruits. I'm pretty sure that the rabbis would not approve of mixing in this way. My assessment: it looked prettier than my normal bowl of plain flakes, turned my soymilk a little bluish, and every third spoonful or so tasted a little tangy in an otherwise sort of fruity if you know what you're actually tasting sort of way.