It is with some concern that I send my 3rd grade daughter to school tomorrow armed with her well thought out and pretty good submission to the "Sweet Potato Contest". Sweet Potatoes are, of course, this months "farm to table" featured produce of the month. Which is very cool. I mean, it's cool to have a "farm to table featured produce of the month" not that it is sweet potatoes.
It's October so clearly the theme of the fall veggie is ripe for "farming to tabling". That being said, everything around here is a contest. And my daughter really would like to win a contest. And so I am sending my very proud and excited girl to school with a great contest entry - a picture of what is quite obviously, a piece of crap. No, no, don't get me wrong. The picture itself isn't crappy, it is just an illustration, as you can see from it's photo, of a piece of crap with a green onion ring on a leash as it's pet. Cleverly formatted as a "wanted" ad.
What's a Mom to do? The girl is inspired to win the farmer's market gift certificate! The picture you see here is her second draft! I am forced to wonder what an illustration of a sweet potato in a child's hand would look like that differs from this version, and every one I can conceive of is unmistakably shitty.
I wonder if tomorrow the school will receive 300 pieces of poop art and have a moment of panic in which they realize what they have done. Fortunately, they plan to decide on the winner via random drawing at lunch time. Or is that unfortunate? I have this horrible feeling that my daughter's will be chosen at random out of a huge toilet bowl of submissions and held up high for the whole school to see. That it will be one of those movie moments where she bounds up so excited to have won and turns around to see the whole school cracking up in the background as she realizes with horror that she has submitted a piece of crap in leiu of sweet potato. The scene goes fuzzy. You know the one, I'll assume.
I don't even have an example of this from my own childhood - I'm flying blind here. But I can't call the school and say "nooooo!" at this point - too late. I can't tell my daughter not to submit her piece of... art. So I guess that we'll see what tomorrow brings and hope that the theme of competition that is so pervasive at school doesn't inspire a "Captain Underpants" type day and that her artistic dignity is preserved by just not getting hers picked.
Good luck tomorrow, sweet elementary school, this should be good times.
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