Snack it to Me!

The snack cart is filled with salty riches, and is harder to
resist than George Clooney holding a kitten.

As you already know, I am a teacher. More specifically, I am a special education teacher, and, due to a lack of space in my school, I share a classroom with two other women. I wasn’t sure how much I would like sharing a classroom with two other people, but I actually like this arrangement even better than when I had my own classroom. Our classroom is set up so that each of us has our own little space, and we are not sitting in desks located mere inches from each other, which is helpful. For the two previous years I shared a room with another teacher who I liked a lot, but our desks were pretty much right on top of each other because the classroom was a fifth grade classroom that also housed around 30 students. Even though my roommate and I had a good relationship, I know there were times when both of us would have liked a little more personal space.

So this year the room has good feng shui, plus my two roommates and I have a lot in common. Both of them are also divorced, though their situations are somewhat more complicated than mine because they both have children. But still, I can’t tell you how therapeutic it is to have two divorced women always at the ready with whom I can share my thoughts worries. While my friends and family are always great about letting me talk through problems or concerns, it is nice to know that my two roommates really get where I am coming from, because they have also been through divorce and all of its ups and downs. I often refer to our room as the “Divorced Ladies Club,” and I am only half joking. A surprising and unexpected effect of this new room arrangement is how much emotional support I receive on a daily basis, which makes me appreciate my job more.

There is, however, just one little downside to this otherwise glorious arrangement: my two roommates are big snackers. They are grazers, who eat a little bit all day long, but don’t really seem to rely on the standard three meals a day arrangement to which I subscribe. It seems to work for them, though, as both of them are thin and look great. Were I to try to be a grazer, the result would be the consumption of six bags of Snyder’sHoney Mustard and Onion Pretzel Pieces in one day, which is not a good thing for a number of reasons. I do understand, though, that everyone has their own eating style, so it doesn’t bug me, and it wouldn’t really affect me at all, were it not for the snack cart.

The snack cart is located in the front right corner of the classroom, and it basically looks like a Braves game concession stand, only on a slightly smaller scale. The snack cart started out as a drawer in one of the ladies’ desks, and slowly grew and migrated to a mobile cart in the front of our classroom. In fact, I think it was even my suggestion that the empty cart be appropriated as a mobile snack holder! Both of my roommates bring in snacks, usually on Mondays, that stay on the cart and which we are all free to eat from during the week. Plus, other teachers who know of the cart’s existence often visit when they need a fix of Doritos, or a little Cracker Jack pick-me-up. If one of us brings in a snack that we really don’t want anyone else to eat, then we just keep it at our desks and away from the cart.

Now, I am a sweets person, rather than a salty person, and both of my roommates are salty people. If the snack cart contained candy or cookies I would be totally done for, and would down the contents of the entire cart within about 4.5 seconds. While I will definitely eat salty snacks, and I do get cravings for them, I am considerably better fortified to resist a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos than I am to resist a jar of peanut M & M’s. Still, when you sit in a room for several hours a day with delicious salty snacks in your line of sight, it is hard not to partake.

For the first week of school I did not participate in the snack cart activities at all. I neither brought in nor ate any of the snacks. The problem came when one of my roommates brought in Snyder’s Honey Mustard and Onion Pretzel Pieces. After just a taste I realized why people destroy their lives in pursuit of hard drugs, as these pretzel bites were just about the best and most addictive thing I had ever tasted. I ate more than I should have out of the bag, so the following week I brought in a new bag that I got at the grocery store.

Not intending to continue my participation in the snack cart phenomenon, I didn’t think any more about it, until later that week when I discovered the Utz Pub Mix. It is kind of like Chex Mix, and is extremely salty, and I ate about two pounds of it that week, though I did track every little bit on Weight Watchers. I renewed my vow to snack abstention the following week, and started imagining that the snack cart was surrounded by a lush, green topiary hedge that it was not possible for me to go around or through. That worked for a while, but, as you know, I had kind of an emotional weekend this past weekend, and Tuesday was a particularly emotional day, and, well, I fell off the wagon with such force that I am surprised I didn’t break my neck and both legs. Who knows what I consumed yesterday in my emotion-fueled frenzy? I certainly don’t, although I know that Cracker Jacks were involved in some way, as when I woke up from my stupor I had the prize stuck to the side of my face. Anyway, that snack cart is like my kryptonite!

We have to write goals at work every year, and one of them is a personal goal in which we specify something we would like to accomplish that is, well, personal, and not related to improving student achievement. Last year my goal was to get to work each day 30 minutes earlier than I had been getting there. I was wondering if I wrote “Stay away from the snack cart” as my personal goal if my principal would think I was joking. I think it is a highly legitimate personal goal!

Red grapes are my best weapon against the
snack cart!

My new strategy is to get a 900-gallon container of red grapes from Costco, and to keep grapes in the refrigerator at work so that I can eat those instead of Flavor Blasted Doritos when I get hungry. It worked well yesterday, even though I sort of had grapes every time I thought about the snack cart and its riches, and I was not exactly hungry each time I ate some, so by the end of the day I felt like a waterlogged sailor who had washed up on the beach, you know, if the ocean were made of red grapes. If you ever have to resist a co-worker’s candy jar or the donuts in the break room, I definitely recommend keeping copious amounts of grapes at the ready!

If you ever come by my school, please stop by and take a look at the snack cart, as it is the stuff of legend. In fact, in keeping with the idea of legends, and heroes and villains and stuff, I like to think of myself as Batman, and that snack cart as Two-Face. I chose Two-Face because the snack cart contains both salty and sweet snacks (even though there is just one sweet snack on the whole cart.) When you stop by to rubberneck at the cart, be sure to let me know you’re there, and, if you are nice, I will even share my grapes with you!

Snack cart image courtesy of Audrey Broome

Red grapes image courtesy of http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red_grapes.jpg