To help pay for my MA in TESL and to gain experience, I worked as a graduate TA teaching writing to international students at KU. I fell in love with teaching five paragraph essays, though it wouldn’t be until my days in Chengdu that I perfected the craft (in the imperfect ‘perfected’ sense).
Wait!
Wait.
Hear me out you nay sayers of the joy of a good five paragraph essay! Many (OK, all but one) have faded from my memory, but that one might be worth all the rest. My students were to write about a fear they had and Lisa from Taiwan turned in the gem, “I am afraid of snacks.”
Girl, don’t I know it, especially in the late afternoon when I’m hungry.
Pen in hand, I dove in. She started off setting up her fear (probably started in childhood, I don’t recall). Moving on to the body, she shared her fear of snacks in the woods {Huh?} and how you never knew when one might scare you or you might step on one.
Snacks. Snakes. So close in letters but so V-E-R-Y far apart in visual image in the woods.
To this day, if I picture a hostess cupcake or a Twinkie hiding in the woods behind a tree, ready to pounce, I can’t help but chuckle. I give her total props for never once cracking or writing ‘snake,’ this was in the days of handwritten essays. She was consistent in her fear of snacks.
I’ve been thinking about her essay because the year of the snake is almost upon us in China and the stores have been gearing up for the season. It turns out there aren’t as many ways to make snakes cute for decorations without making them look like dancing sperm, leading to fewer snake specific decorations and more generic Spring Festival ones.
Regardless of your personal feelings towards snakes or snacks, may the year of the snake be one filled with moments that make you chuckle!
“Hong bao” (red envelopes) are given to kids this time of year. The challenge for designers: don’t make the snakes too scary or too sperm-like. How do you think they did?
Any good snack or snake stories out there?
Love the story! Hmmm….I wonder what the Starbuck’s year of the snack…I mean, snake mug looks like! ^_^
It’s OK … I wondered if they’d do one or not :)
I grew up in a house whose yard ended at a wooded area and a creek. Poisonous snakes would crawl out of the woods and come visit the front of our house.
My dad built a brick shed at the back on our property, and one year a black snake moved into the shed. Poisonous snakes fear black snakes so as long as that black snake stayed in the shed (which was 5 years), no other snake entered our yard.
When friends would come to visit, my sister and I would go show them the shed. As they walked thru the door, we would say, “Watch out for the snake” to which they would scramble to exit the shed.
Ha! That’s a great story!
This made me laugh!! Oh I miss China sooooooo much I can hardly stand it!
Parts are just so unique to China, eh?!