have a cheese tasting

Love.

The cheese tasting was my favorite. I remember it really well even though it was 25 years ago. We ate pieces of apple between different cheeses to cleanse our palate.

have a cheese tasting

An absolutely essential skill!

I took home ec in jr. high, and turned in a couple of really disastrous shirts. I taught myself embroidery in college, though, and I was cooking basic stuff from a young age, so cooking in home ec was no big. I'm a good cook, and know how to clean just about anything, but it was never about finding a man.

My dad also taught me to clean tack and feed livestock, to find morels, ride well enough that I was leading trail rides on the river bluffs at 8, throw a punch, change a tire, check all fluids in my car, etc. etc. They wanted me to be competent and to be able to take care of myself.

I took a typing class in high school, and we learned on Selectrics with the damned hide-your-hands thing. I can touch type for the most part, but I do look sometimes.

And I never use the right shift key, ever! I just realized!

I got $100 and a power typewriter that had a tiny screen you could flip up and would show three lines of type that you could write and edit before it would print out. THREE. LINES. And a copy of Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia, which I still have and will never give away, because my parents bought it and inscribed it for me.

We had guys in our home ec class, it was amusing. They huddled together, then they discovered that cooking was were the wonderful snacks came from. The competitive cookie making annoyed the teacher.

Annoyed? That seems silly. I'd be all "Cookie Thunderdome! Two men enter, one man leaves! Loser cleans all!"

"With ALL THE COOKIES!"

(This is possibly why my students will never forget me. I faked a huge fight where I got "fired" by my principle to illustrate some literary principle, and it was great fun for both of us, and I SNOWED those kids. They mention it to me to this day.)

My middle school had this thing called "The Wheel" for 6th graders for electives.I don't remember how many electives there were but you changed around until you got a taste of each one and then picked one at the end of the year for 7th and 8thgrade. This was for indecisive people like me.

So the classes were trying to pitch why they were the best. Honestly I don't remember anything but home ec, shop, and something that wasn't home ec but more like business with typing and learnig to write a check.

Home Ec almost had me when the teacher was explaining all these cool projects you could do. Except all the cool projects I wanted to do were for 3rd year Home Ec, which I would never get to because I'd only have 2 years of Home Ec.

I ended up doing band. With mixed results.

I never learned an instrument. I was all set to learn the viola in 6th grade...when I broke BOTH arms.

I was relegated to choir. I like to sing, but I don't have a great voice. I have perfect pitch, so though other people singing off-key grates my nerves like cheese, my own off-tune warbling doesn't bother me, because I just laugh at myself. And I usually am singing stupid songs I make up on the fly.

With which I have contaminated my family. Dan and Micah both sing "Arthur the Dog-Faced Dog" now.