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Canned Food Drive
Nov. 6th, 2011 09:52 pmEvery year my school has a canned food drive.
I remember as a kid in middle school, I really wanted to participate in the canned food drive. It was for a cause that I supported (giving food to those in need), PLUS it was inevitably part of some sort of grade-level competition, which would allow me to feel integrated into a school. (I was one of those students who was generally disengaged from school cliques and popularity stuff, but loved the structured participation of Spirit Week. I guess if I lived in America in the 40s I would be planting a Victory Garden.)
So I went home, and asked my parents. Dad would grudgingly say, "2-3 cans would be all right" -- after all, we didn't have a lot of money, either. Then I pulled the chair into the kitchen so that I could look in our cupboards and figure out which canned goods I could appropriate -- the black bean fried fish, or the pickled vegetable root? Oh, maybe the pickled mustard greens or the bamboo shoots would be better? I didn't think anyone would want a whole can of red bean paste...
Finally I decided on 2 cans of the black bean fried fish and a can of pickled mustard greens, because they were yummy and also didn't require additional preparation. I bring them to the school library and drop them in the bin for my grade-level. I still remember that feeling of inadequacy and alienation of putting my squat, ovoid cans with Chinese text in with large paper bags full of canned corn and soups. It was painfully obvious that my cans didn't belong, that there wasn't even language to describe my cans or categories to put them in. On the other hand, I had no idea that soups and non-pickled vegetables could come in cans. My mind instantly filled with anxious questions about a world that I didn't understand. Would they even count my cans for the competition? Would the people at the kitchen even use my cans? What if my cans were part of a giant pile that people can take, and my cans were just rejected?
I left the library, careful to avoid eye contact with the librarian who was helping sort the cans. I think the following year, I went out to the grocery store and bought a can of chicken broth, but the year after that, I stopped contributing to the canned food drive.
I remember as a kid in middle school, I really wanted to participate in the canned food drive. It was for a cause that I supported (giving food to those in need), PLUS it was inevitably part of some sort of grade-level competition, which would allow me to feel integrated into a school. (I was one of those students who was generally disengaged from school cliques and popularity stuff, but loved the structured participation of Spirit Week. I guess if I lived in America in the 40s I would be planting a Victory Garden.)
So I went home, and asked my parents. Dad would grudgingly say, "2-3 cans would be all right" -- after all, we didn't have a lot of money, either. Then I pulled the chair into the kitchen so that I could look in our cupboards and figure out which canned goods I could appropriate -- the black bean fried fish, or the pickled vegetable root? Oh, maybe the pickled mustard greens or the bamboo shoots would be better? I didn't think anyone would want a whole can of red bean paste...
Finally I decided on 2 cans of the black bean fried fish and a can of pickled mustard greens, because they were yummy and also didn't require additional preparation. I bring them to the school library and drop them in the bin for my grade-level. I still remember that feeling of inadequacy and alienation of putting my squat, ovoid cans with Chinese text in with large paper bags full of canned corn and soups. It was painfully obvious that my cans didn't belong, that there wasn't even language to describe my cans or categories to put them in. On the other hand, I had no idea that soups and non-pickled vegetables could come in cans. My mind instantly filled with anxious questions about a world that I didn't understand. Would they even count my cans for the competition? Would the people at the kitchen even use my cans? What if my cans were part of a giant pile that people can take, and my cans were just rejected?
I left the library, careful to avoid eye contact with the librarian who was helping sort the cans. I think the following year, I went out to the grocery store and bought a can of chicken broth, but the year after that, I stopped contributing to the canned food drive.
