Ah, school days. No, not the angst filled adolescence everyone’s had, butbefore that. Think back to when you were six or seven, when the world revolvedaround what you had to eat in your tiffin box and whether you had been madeclass monitor. When everything was okay on the weekends, and certainly when thephone rang, it was rarely, if ever for you.
The best part about those years? Indubitably, your birthday. That was the oneday it was all about you. You were special. You had presents, you invited yourentire class (not just the popular people or the people you liked the most, youhad to even invite the little boy who said nothing but picked his nose all day,or the little girl who had temper tantrums when the teacher corrected her) andthey got you presents too! One of the schools I went to let you wear "homeclothes" instead of an uniform on your birthday. Then you raised your hand,the teacher let you get up and you walked up and down the aisles of studentsdistributing sweets. You felt like a queen.
At the boarding school I went to, there was an in-house bakery. If it was yourbirthday, you went to the housemistress a couple of days before, and she gaveyou a special order slip to take to the bakery indicating how big a cake youwanted and what you wanted written on it. The cake was always the same,chocolate with hard chocolate icing and you always cut it right after baths,instead of going to tea. A birthday cake was much better than the bread andbutter they served anyway. Everyone from your class came rushing for it,sometimes you called some of your special friends from the other classes too andyou cut it and people sang to you and you always carried a piece to yourhousemistress and the matrons. The morning of your birthday you would alreadyhave been sung to by everyone at breakfast, but this distributing of thelargesse only happened in the evenings.
Birthdays in school are fun, though, no doubt about it. Whether it was yours orsomeone else’s, there was always food involved. You were treated to orange icecandy bars in the canteen. Or someone’s mother sent with them the idlis shemade so well. Birthdays were an occasion of indulgence in those innocent times.
Maybe that’s the problem. These aren’t innocent times anymore, even ifyou’re six or ten. This storycaught my eye recently. Since the ministry of New Zealand is on this health foodkick, teachers at Oteha Valley Primary School near Aukland have told parents notto send cakes through their children for their birthdays. Talk about a buzzkill. Although the health ministry did clarify that they only meant food sold onthe premises and not outside, the message still went out in a circular. Imaginetelling your kid, "Sorry, sweetie, no cake for you because you might getobese, how about some carrot sticks for you and your friends instead?" Ithink that’s taking it a little too far.
We are an aware age, only too aware in some cases about the dangers of thisworld. Why have kids at all, I ask, when you’re clearly preventing them fromliving just as much as, say, obesity, would?
