By Mordechai Schmutter

One of the great joys of being a parent that they don’t tell you before they send you home from the hospital is that occasionally your kid will come up to you in his pajamas, about an hour after his bedtime, and say, “I have an enormous project due tomorrow.”

This just happened to me. And it wasn’t just a regular project. It was for a state fair.

Well, it wasn’t really a state fair. A state fair is when you get together in a large parking lot to get thrown around on scary rides that are not actually attached to the ground. This was a school fair about the states, to which the parents come to marvel at which kids’ projects were clearly done by the parents.

This project is more serious than a regular project, because not only is it seen by your child’s teacher, who already knows what it looks like when your son does a project without your help, it’s also seen by the other parents–because this fair is 45 minutes long and there’s not much to do but look at all the other projects until we’re allowed to go home.

To be fair, we should have known about this sooner. The school sent a note home weeks ago. With our son. But if our son can’t be trusted to tell us about the project himself, what makes them think he can be trusted to give us a note?

Maybe we should have seen it coming. My kids’ school has some kind of fair every year–as we are slowly discovering, one grade at a time. In first grade they had a recycling fair, in second they had a biography fair, and in third they had a recycling fair again, in which they got to recycle the projects they made for the first-grade recycling fair, assuming the parents didn’t throw them out. My son is in fourth grade now, so apparently there’s a state fair.

A lot of schools have some kind of state fair, because they can’t teach the kids about every single state. There are like 50 of them. But they also can’t teach them about none of the states. So this way they teach them, as a concept, “By the way, there are other states out there.” I think they hope that the kids will get together and discuss their respective states at recess or something.

It’s kind of like in the old days, when the entire yeshiva could afford only one Shas, so everyone in the yeshiva mastered one masechta, and that way, if you needed to know something from Bava Metzia, you would ask the Bava Metzia guy. (This might be why they split the Bavas.) But this is the same thing. They even gave out little directories when we got to the fair.

“You need anything on Louisiana? Call Schwartzman. He did a project on Louisiana in fourth grade.”

I hope nobody calls my kid with questions about Maryland.

Yes, my son picked Maryland. I don’t know why. I think he picked it because his friend picked it, and he figured they could work on it together. I didn’t even know there was a project. All I knew was that he told me his friend was coming over to “do homework.” (I think he actually made finger quotes, but I didn’t notice at the time.) And I said OK, because usually I have to fight with him to do his homework. Let his friend fight with him for once.

But they didn’t fight at all. His friend came over, and the two of them disappeared into the basement playroom, and they came up about a week later, and we asked, “Where is it? Did you leave it in the basement?” And my son asked, “Leave what in the basement?”

We had no idea what the “homework” was, exactly, or why his friend had to come over three times, but our son attempted to do the entire thing in secret, because if we helped him, we would make him do it properly. My kid doesn’t care about presentation. He wore boots for about a month after the last snowfall because he couldn’t find his shoes. And then, the night before the kids had to hand it in, they brought their projects upstairs, along with the list of requirements, and my wife finally got a chance to look at them, and then to look at our son’s project, which looked like he did it in four minutes. So she made him redo whatever she could, but he didn’t bother erasing what he’d put down beforehand. His prime concern was not to make things look good, just to finish his homework. (That’s our fault, I think. We ask him every night, “Did you finish your homework?” So that’s his prime concern.)

For example, one of the requirements was that each kid had to post pictures of many of the official state “things.” Every state has its own “things,” like an official bird and a mammal and a state capital and a nickname that the other states called it in high school. Some of these are ironic nicknames, like how New Jersey is called the “Garden State.”

“What?” my wife is saying over my shoulder. “We have a garden.”

That’s not the only strange name. For example, Indiana is called “the Crossroads of America,” meaning: “The state that America flies over to get to where it’s going.” Washington DC is called “DMV,” officially because it stands for “DC, Maryland, Virginia,” but also because everything takes forever and no one’s ever in a good mood. And Connecticut is called the “Blue Law State,” because it’s closed on Sundays.

Every state has its own flower. I didn’t even know there were 50 kinds of flowers. Massachusetts, for example, has the Mayflower. This is not a corny joke I just made up. Look it up.

And every state even has its own insect. New Jersey has the European honeybee, which isn’t even an American insect, and 16 other states have that same bee. I think it’s because of all the state flowers. Meanwhile, New York has roaches. Though that’s not their official insect. It’s ladybugs.

How are these things selected? Did people vote on this? I’d love to vote on, say, mammals. We normally just get to vote on politicians. But it would be fun to see, say, a bear in office. Is that how it works? Are there bees all over Christie’s office?

But at least my son knows the official state flower of Maryland. I doubt the people in Maryland know the official state flower of Maryland. I can’t even tell you the official state flower of New Jersey (violet). They didn’t ask us that on our citizenship test when we moved here from New York. But at least I know how to figure out which fourth-grader to call about it.

Anyway, so far the state fair is the most boring fair. For the biography fair, each kid got to dress up like his historical figure was dressed on whatever day they took that famous picture of him. (You don’t honestly think he wore this outfit every day, do you? That’s pretty uncomfortable. You think George Washington tucked his pants into his socks every day? That’s who they elected? That guy? No, he wore it on the boat because there was water sloshing around at the bottom, and it was 0 degrees outside.) And for the recycling fair, we got to build things out of garbage, and then we got to look at someone’s mosaic, made entirely of soda-bottle caps, and say things like, “Wow, this guy’s parents drank a lot of soda last week!” But for this project, we get to post things on a piece of oak tag that is folded like a French-door refrigerator. It’s not like each kid is going to dress up as his state. Or have everyone show up in one contained room with the official state bird perched on his arm. Basically, you get to walk around and watch people’s oak-tags fall over and look at your kid’s project, which you’ve already seen, back when you put it together last minute, as well as all the other kids’ projects, which you don’t actually care about.

Come to think of it, why are there 50 separate states? Does any other country have 50 states with 50 different flags and all those species of bugs? Why not just merge everything and have one big government? Though I guess they have to do it this way because they can’t get rid of the states now. It’s called the United States. What are we gonna do? Change our name? If you think you can get 50 states to agree on a new name, you’re crazy. v

Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia and is the author of four books, published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to MSchmutter@gmail.com.

 

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here