honestyrain

always be honest, except for when you lie

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

basic cleanliness is basic so do it

I was assistant teacher at my son's preschool last week...or the week before...whatever...and during snack time I was disgusted to discover that some mothers and or fathers are not the cleanliest sort of people.

One child's lunch bag had actual mold growing inside of it. Actual green yucky poopy mold. MOLD, I'm saying. The kind of wet icky mold that has grown from the thing never having been wiped after little spills of this substance and that. I had to watch this poor boy take from this Spongebob Squarepants Lunch Kit one container of crackers and one container of cheese, plus one empty cup into which I put a half serving of milk. Half serving because if you give three and four year olds a full cup of milk you will be there a full hour waiting for them to drink it.

I grant you that the child's snack was encased in sealed plastic containers and I grant you that they were not touching the mold. For some reason this makes almost no dent in my disgust. I pitied the boy.

If you are such a parent I want to say outright that I know you get busy and forget the little things like wiping out a lunch bag but please, take this opportunity. Feel the humiliation that is your child's moldy lunch kit in the anonymity that is The Internet and once you have recovered from it go and wash each and every thing in your house that might A) contain food at some point and B) be at risk of growing mold. Green yucky ickpoo mold, as I've said.

I cannot believe I let any child eat something that spent time in such a filthy environment. It will be many years before the guilt subsides, to be sure. If it were my child I'd have ripped the snacks from his cute little fists and thrown them at the trash can as though dealing with biohazardous waste.

Hazmat would have been called in.

I mean really.