A Motion Against Meat Loaf

1/8/2000

A Motion against Meat Loaf

Long ago teachers were required to go to PTA meetings. I remember one at which there was an hour of serious discussion about serving meat at a potluck supper. At last I made a formal motion that we have the supper with no meat provided by the PTA. The motion passed. We moved on to some other weighty question. The potluck dinner was a great success and everyone had enough to eat. After a few years of meetings like this, when someone suggested I run for President, I said OK but I will either kill the organization or cure it. Being a teacher and a parent and PTA president all at once takes a lot of fast hat changing. My first wild act was to start the meeting on time. I asked our principal to sing for the opening. He turned up 15 minutes late and said," I thought you wanted me to sing." I said, " I did, but we've passed that part of the meeting." This took some nerve, and was a disappointment because he had a fine voice and we seldom found a chance to hear it, but he wasn't about to fire the president of the PTA, and we moved on.

And then there were the dinners. A stalwart group had always run the dinners. They insisted they were overworked and needed help. I reported to the kitchen, chopped a few peppers, asked for something more to do, and then understood that this was a closed circle of very competent people who wanted honor and sympathy but not help from an intruder. They didn't even need help. But I did, when the principal wanted us to serve dinner for 300 for the retirement dinner of the county superintendent. The old guard voted against it, said we didn't need any more money. The principal insisted. So I set out to plan the dinner, trusting that some help would turn up as time passed. I had never cooked on a restaurant kitchen stove, but I figured it was just a question of arithmetic to multiply for 300 portions, and divide the pots over all those burners. Fortunately the dear man who always mashed the potatoes stuck to his post. About noon of the big day I realized that only half the carrots I ordered had been delivered. One of the old guard announced at the last minute that I could not serve carrots, no one liked carrots, and she would take care of string beans as the proper vegetable. I had to convince her that I didn't have a burner left for one more thing. She had the grace to apologize, she and the guests loved the Honeyed Carrots, and later she wrote a letter to the local paper about the success of the dinner. The missing carrots arrived. Members took pity and came to help cook and serve. I panicked over gravy for the ham, but persuaded it to thicken just in time. For weeks before the dinner I had been making and freezing the desserts at home. I had stapled bits of plastic flowers to paper dessert plates, and out they went with a cup of Biscuit Tortoni and a home made cookie, for a festive end to a good dinner.

I was so wound up even after all the clean up was done, that I attacked the PTA storage room. Decorations for every holiday, signs, a bag of 100 whistles, papers, the debris of every dinner and party, unsold stuff from every bazaar for twenty years. I cleaned and sorted and restacked and when I was ready to stagger home and sleep, I took away one object. It was a hideous hot pink and violent green crocheted creation intended to conceal a roll of toilet paper. It was so ugly that I had to send it to my sister in law for Christmas. She is a professional artist, with a great sense of humor. I didn't have to explain why I was sending this thing, or what it was supposed to be, although I did explain where I found it. The last I heard of it, a daring young friend of my nephew put it on her head and wore it to church in San Francisco. I didn't hear how many compliments she got. That was the finale for my first and last PTA dinner.