Category Archives: Ethical dilemmas

Less is more

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One of the things I struggle with as a parent is trying to get my kids to be content with less. Less stuff. Fewer toys. A smaller serving of ice cream.

Sometimes I feel that good parenting has to be saying “No” a lot. No to stuff, no to more toys, no to incessant whining. I’m sure that when I was a child I didn’t whine for new things every time we went out. I didn’t feel an outing wasn’t complete if I hadn’t brought home some new piece of crap to fill up the house. I got new things for Christmas and for my birthday, which were conveniently at opposite ends of the calendar. In between, barring unexpected visits from far-flung relations, I played with what I had already.

I remember, though, very much wanting to have lunch in a snack bar when we would be out on a Saturday, and to get a sausage roll, instead of the “horrible” picnic my parents would pack. Because children don’t appreciate anything, a boring sandwich in the car, watching the waves roll in over a deserted beach in County Wicklow, was not interesting to me. A lukewarm sausage roll, on the other hand, flaky and golden outside, salty and pink and spongy inside, eaten at formica tables under buzzing florescent lights – now you’re talking.

I rarely got the sausage roll, but when I did, it was a treat.

I remember trying on a new duffel coat in Dunne’s. My mother wanted the grey, because it was a sort of heathered colour that would “hide the dirt”. I wanted the navy – it was smooth and sophisticated and … oh, I have no idea why it was so much nicer in my mind than the grey one, but I wanted the navy. I tried them each on, and when wearing the navy I pranced with a spring in my step and a smile on my face; in the grey I slouched and dragged my feet. I was making them laugh, though, not really being a brat. I knew I was trying it on in both senses of the phrase.

They bought the grey one, and I wore it and thought sadly of the navy that was denied me for at least two winters.

As an only child, I probably had more than most. But we didn’t have a lot. Some years were harder than others, I know; but I never saw it in the food on the table or my Christmas presents. My parents are frugal people who hate waste and will never buy something just for the sake of it. (My mother’s handbag purchases excepted. Once or twice she shocked me to the core by buying two handbags in one day. I have not yet reached those heights of flathiúlachas .)

And now I have these children with all this stuff. They can’t go to Target without assuming the right to something from the dollar section; and I think it’s okay because it’s only the dollar section and there’s still the entire toy department for me to have to say No about. They both get an allowance now, and Dash is scrupulously saving every penny he has – not for anything in particular, but just to see how much he can get, I think. He likes to count it and gloat, Scroogelike. Mabel forgets to put her two quarters away and they float around the kitchen for a few days, or she turns them into parts of her game and I find them in the dollhouse a week later. She spent her previous amassed fortune on a mama and baby fox in Ikea a while ago, even though originally she’d been saving for an Anna or Elsa doll. But she’s not really interesting in saving for something else. It takes too long, when you’re five.

When we go to the thrift store or a yard sale, they know they can get something; though I try to enforce an exchange system – they have to bring a toy to donate. And it’s so very hard for them to choose – it’s so difficult to give up their Stuff, even when it’s totally crap stuff, because it belongs to them and they take ownership so very seriously.

It’s impossible to give your children the childhood you had. And for plenty of the time I don’t even want to. I’d still pick the sausage roll, though I’d go and watch the waves afterwards. Maybe so long as I can get them to appreciate the waves, or the flowers, or the rainbow, it’s okay to go to the yard sale once in a while too. I just need to purge these shelves when they’re not looking.

Bursting toy shelves

Debunking

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Sometimes life just writes my blog posts for me. The post about Mabel’s dentist visit segued into Dash’s prosaic encounter with the tooth fairy; and then this happened…

After school yesterday, out of the blue, Mabel and I had this conversation:

“Mummy, is Santa real? A___ told me today that it’s just the parents giving presents.”
“ Oh really ?” said I, playing for time.
“I know from the way you said that, he’s not real.”
“ What? “
“You used that voice you use.”
[Oh crap. Really? I'm that transparent?]

Then we had a little conversation about whether it’s more fun if Santa’s real or not real, and she admitted it’s more fun if he is real, but she still wanted to know the truth. So I told her the truth. And followed it up swiftly with the Very Serious Admonishment that now that she’s in on this big secret, she must be very careful to keep the secret from the other kids.

I admit, I felt a twinge of sadness at the passing of the belief. But mostly I felt relief. I never did very well with the double standards required by Doing Santa. When you’re reassuring your kids on the one hand that giants don’t exist and dinosaurs are extinct and fairies are only in stories and there are no goblins, and then encouraging them on the other hand to write letters to the man who’ll come down the chimney and leave them presents in some totally magical manner… well, I’ve nothing against anyone who does it, but I found it tricky.

Anyway, there are great things about having Santa finally debunked:

  • I don’t have to explain how come Santa only shops at Target.
  • I can put useful things in their stockings that Santa couldn’t possibly have known they needed (and certainly wasn’t asked for).
  • I don’t have to be careful to remember which presents we gave them and which ones Santa did for years to come.
  • Santa doesn’t get all the credit for the great gift ideas that were really mine.

Don’t worry, Santa will still be coming to our house. Probably until the children are grown-up, and maybe even then a while. But if he slips up now and then and brings the wrong thing … well, I suppose the kids will know exactly who to blame.

Don’t call her cute

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Don’t call my daughter cute.

I don’t mind. I think she’s cute too, sometimes. But she’ll have your guts for garters if she hears you.

A particularly chatty (and somewhat clueless) fellow customer in the supermarket made that mistake a week or so ago.

“You’re just so cute,” she said, in a cutesy-wutesy voice.

The five-year-old was unimpressed. “I’m not cute,” she countered, with a steely gaze.

I asked her later why she doesn’t like it – not because I disagreed with her stance, but just because I was interested in her reasoning.

“Cute means small. I’m not small. Babies are cute. I’m not a baby.”

Fair enough. Much like Thumbelina, in her heart she’s six feet tall. It’s not her fault that grownups are all still bigger than her.

On Friday, the dentist’s assistant tried to call her cute. Mabel was nervous about the visit, but I could tell this was galling her, so I came gallantly to her defense:

“She doesn’t like to be called cute, actually.”

“Oh? Well, what would she prefer?”

I took the opportunity to put some words in her mouth, since she wasn’t feeling quite as perky as she had been in the supermarket, and I suggested, “How about, I don’t know, smart?”

The dental assistant took that on board, though it’s not as easy to believably tell a child you just met and who won’t meet your eye, never mind talk to you, that she’s very smart.

But you know what, you wouldn’t tell a stranger you’d never met that she was very pretty. (Unless you were in a bar and trying to score, and bolstered by alcohol, and even then she might not appreciate it.) So how about you stop making superficial remarks about children in front of them, and instead, wait for them to talk to you first? That way, if they want to tell you about their new shoes or the fact that you’re buying their favourite snack because it’s their birthday next week, or that their favourite animal is the proboscis monkey, then you can legitimately have a conversation, at the end of which you might just be able to remark with sincerity that they are, indeed, a smart kid.

And then I will try to help them learn to take a compliment graciously, with a smile and a Thank you.

Stick police

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Things that go through your head when your kids start playing with someone else’s kids at the playground:

Isn’t that nice, they’re all playing together.
My children are so well socialized, obviously.
They’re playing a nice game of tag.
Wait, where did that stick come from?
Oh, that’s okay, they all have sticks.
Wait now, that’s not a stick, that’s half a small tree.
Is the other parent here? He must be the man in the car. Where does he stand on the stick issue? Should I say something? Am I a helicopter parent if I wade in yelling “No sticks!” or am I a negligent parent if I don’t? Is he judging me?
Okay, they’re in teams. That’s nice.
No, wait, you can’t exclude the little one.
Uh oh. Here comes the little one to talk to her dad.

… 

Maybe I’ll just go have a word with them. Make sure they’re all playing nicely together.

“Hi! What’s your name?”
“Sarah, this is Mabel. Mabel’s four. Are you four? Is that your brother? He’s in second grade like Mabel’s brother? That’s nice. Now you can be friends. Be careful with the sticks. Maybe we should put the sticks down. Dash, how about playing tag with no sticks? Hmm? No, you don’t have to defend yourself. Well, yes, I can see that the other boys have sticks … Fine, just everyone play nicely, right?”

…

Well, that cleared everything right up.
Girls against boys?
No, but, the girls are four and the boys are seven or eight and that’s three against two… oh good, she wants to be on his team…but now it’s everyone against the little one again…
I should not be policing this.
But that father is sitting there in his car.
Judging me.

…

He wasn’t judging me. He looked out his car window and we had a nice conversation about how you should let the children just play, but that it’s always hard to know where another parent might draw a line that you don’t. And then I decided that playing dodgeball with sticks was probably a good moment to draw a line, and announced that it was time to go home.

Free-range parents v. the Lorax

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One of my favourite things about our neighbourhood is the Sunday morning farmers’ market. We show up some time after ten, the kids get chocolate croissants, we get coffee, we sit on the grass, friends appear, kids run around, we chat, it’s nice. I buy some vegetables, usually.

The children all like to climb two trees nearby – one in particular is sturdy and child-friendly, branches low enough to the ground for a tall five-year-old to boost themself up, spread wide enough to hold four or more at once. They play monkeys, and baby birds, and jungle animals, and every now and then a parent is called over to put up or take down a smaller child and be drawn into the game.

Yesterday morning was just the same.
“Where’s Dash?” B asked me.
“In the tree,” I said, waving vaguely in that direction, where I could see a flash of blue Superman t-shirt between the green leaves.

A few minutes later Dash and his friend came back to us. The friend was looking upset and as she sat on her mother’s lap and began to cry, I asked Dash what had happened, afraid she’d hurt herself.

“She’s a bit unhappy because a lady told us to get out of the tree,” he told me.
“What lady?”
“The lady over there.”
“Why? Were you doing something wrong?”
“No, we were just in the tree.”

My friend (also a mom of tree-climbers) and I went over to see what was what. The children all came with us, six of them, all a little unsure and wondering what was going to happen. We told them that they were allowed climb in the tree, because all their parents said they could. We told them it wasn’t against the law. We put those who wanted to climb back up in the tree.

The elderly lady approached us, looking disapproving. We thanked her for her concern. We said that we allowed our children to climb the tree, that they were doing it no harm, that they played here every week.

She told us they shouldn’t, that they were damaging the tree. We said they weren’t. They all know not to put their weight on branches that are too slim to bear it. It was a face-off, it really was.

“Make them come down, or I’ll… I’ll call the police,” she wavered, beginning to rummage in her fanny pack for a phone.
“Okay, ” we said. “Call them.”

We stood there putting one child and another up and down according to their whims, as she ambled away and then back, and then took up sentry duty sitting on a nearby rock. She glowered. The children were a little worried and kept telling us she was still there. “That’s okay,” we said. “You’re allowed be in the tree.”

A few minutes later, when most of the kids had tired of the tree and run off to play hide and seek, a police car rolled up and came to a halt in that corner of the parking lot. The lady began to talk to the officer. As I approached from the other side, I heard him say “…it’s not illegal…”
He looked over at me enquiringly.

“Thank you,” I said. “We just wanted to confirm that it’s not illegal for children to climb trees.”
“It’s not,” he said, and I gave him a little thumbs up and a smile.

There was just one four-year-old still in the tree at the time. Then the officer leaned out of his window and asked his mother to take him down, because of “citizen complaints.” So she did, because we are all good law-abiding citizens who do what the police tell us, even when we were abiding by the laws the whole time.

We were pretty disappointed in that. The policeman probably took the path of least resistance, and decided that appeasing a cantankerous old lady by removing a child from a tree was the easiest thing to do.

But it leaves us in limbo and with unanswered questions from our children. If it’s not illegal, why should they have to stop doing it? Why should the cantankerous old lady win? Should we just take our children to a purpose-built playground structure if they want to climb so badly? But what if we want to enjoy the market at the same time?

And I feel bad for the old lady, who may be many years away from remembering how much fun it is to climb a tree, or even how it’s nice to watch your children climb trees instead of playing computer games; who might feel that a tree like that, in a public place, is a treasure that must be protected from little limbs and weighing-down torsos, from children who are little more than vandals and their parents who are jumped-up rebellious teenagers in her eyes.

And I admit that there was a little thrill there, in standing up to an old lady. We tried to be as respectful as we could while letting her know we disagreed and felt she was overstepping the line. We tried to model – what? good rebellion? – for our children. We tried to show our children that we were the grownups who knew the right thing to do, that they could always trust us to be their moral compasses even when others who saw themselves as authority figures might have different messages.

Climbing trees is more complicated than you might think.

———-

To be clear, I don’t want to make the old lady the villain of the piece. She has her opinions, and one of them is that our children shouldn’t be climbing that tree. Like the Lorax, she speaks for the trees. And I don’t blame the policeman, really, for asking us to get the kids down. His job is to keep the peace, and he probably knows that old ladies with nothing much else to do all day are more likely to disturb his peace than busy families who can just head on elsewhere.

It’s just a funny story, really, about the day the police came to tell the children not to climb a tree.

That said, we’ll all be back there next weekend, I think, and if the kids want to climb the tree, we’ll be letting them.

Pope-ular

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Yesterday I had to leave the house at 3.00 to get Dash from school, as usual. The new pope was due to be announced and I had the tv on, but even though I waited – “Come on, it’s two minutes past, where is he?” – I had to leave without finding out who it was.

Not that I even knew who the contenders were. wasn’t one of them, neither was Grumpy Cat, and they were the only possibilities my Facebook feed had informed me of in the past weeks; but suspense is suspense and the Vatican knows how to play up a theatrical moment. I asked my friend-and-neighbour, as we bumped into her on the way up the road, if she knew, and we reminisced about past popes, as you do.

“When Ratzinger was elected I was teaching middle school…” she started to tell me.

Hang on. What? But she was a teacher a lifetime ago, and Ratzinger is almost new. I know it’s a lifetime ago because her kids are the same age as mine, and she taught before they were born. I was … wait, I was in southmost Texas, so it was my kids’ lifetimes ago too, but I feel like the election of the last pope is still a pretty recent event because I blogged about it .

Which just goes to show that I’ve been blathering on here for a long time. For more than a whole pope, you could say, using the ancient and irregular unit of measurement.

Everyone’s saying – where “everyone” is the people I know who might discuss these things – that they hope this pope is more open to change and more forward-looking and more willing to let in tiny things like, say contraception or women priests to the Catholic church. I said it myself yesterday.

But I’ve changed my mind.

The thing is, if the Catholic church did all those things that I and many other Catholics and ex-Catholics want it to, things like accepting contraception, and considering married clergy or even women priests, and acknowledging that it’s okay to be gay (not even touching on the more controversial topics like abortion and euthanasia), it wouldn’t be the Catholic church any more. So I think I actually agree with what Benedict said about wanting a “smaller, purer church.”

If all the people who genuinely disagree with the church’s teachings but still wish to participate in organized religion voted with their feet and left, heading instead for some more inclusive and accepting place (Anglicanism is not a huge stretch), the church would be much smaller – and perhaps have fewer resources and therefore less influence.

So many people stay in the church for the sake of tradition: because they were raised that way and it’s what they know, and they like the warm familiarity of the hymns and the responses and doing what they always did at Christmas and Easter. Maybe because your mother would be devastated if you didn’t, because you’ve never heard of anyone moving church – sure one’s as good as another, even because your in-laws wanted to know when the party was when you had the first baby, so you had a christening even though you hadn’t been to mass in years, and things just snowballed from there.

But unless you’re particularly attached to the other things that only come with Catholicism – transubstantiation and venerating Mary and the saints are all I can think of right now – maybe it’s time to move on. My mother was never a big fan of “a la carte” Catholics who take what they like and ignore the rest, and I’m starting to come around to her opinion, albeit from the opposite direction.

I know many people talk about working for change from within, which is laudable indeed. But the Church doesn’t want to be changed. The Church would rather you left, actually, if you want things like equality and contraception. God is God, and I’m firmly convinced that he/she/it doesn’t care what religion you adhere to and whose rules you follow so long as they’re not hurting anyone else.

Then again, I’m an atheist 85% of the time, so you can feel free to disregard my opinions on God altogether.


 Disclaimer: As always when I talk about religion, I don’t wish to offend anyone and absolutely acknowledge your right to believe whatever you want so long as you respect everyone else’s point of view too. The flying spaghetti monster endorses this post.


Rebel

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Last night, all over this great continent, some people were primping and priming themeselves and their wardrobes in preparation for today’s celebration of love. Others were scrambling to order flowers online or find a card at the second-last minute. But everyone I know was cursing their children’s classmates for their hard-to-spell names and their sheer numbers, and wrestling with printers or glue or tape or stickers, and wondering just how upset a class of three-, four-, five-, six-, or seven-year-olds would be if they didn’t get a Valentine’s card from every single other classmate.

Well, I’ll tell you this afternoon, becuase my two went in with nary a card to their names. (That means nothing.)

Last week, as I think I mentioned, I was delighted to find some cute pre-made Valentine’s cards in the local store. I got a pack of superhero ones for Dash, princess ones for Mabel. They, in turn, were also delighted, and sat down forthwith to write in the “To” and “From” names and seal them with a sticker. That was all they had to do. Crafts are for the birds, I thought. This is perfect.

They both got about halfway through their class lists. “That’s great,” I announced. We’ll do a few more each day and by next Thursday they’ll all be ready.”
“Not so fast,” said Fate to me.

The next day, Dash’s teacher sent home a note saying that everyone should bring in 24 blank envelopes and a packet of candy hearts on Thursday. The blank envelopes confused me for a while – should there be anything inside them? How would the cards get to the right people if their names weren’t on the outsides? Also, our cards didn’t come with envelopes. Also also, I try to minimize the candy, especially the no-redeeming-features sugar-and-Red-40 type candy. If everyone brings in a pack, there’s going to be a lot of candy in the classroom. (They plan to use them for math before eating them. So that makes it fine, right?)

A short consultation with Facebook enlighted me about the envelopes: what she meant was that the Valentines should have a sender’s name but no recipient’s name, for ease of distribution. Which makes it only almost, but not absolutely entirely, pointless. But Dash had done half the names already. Should he finish up the rest or not?

The decision was made by Dash deciding not to do any more, and not to bring any in. Mabel also fell off the wagon and gave up on her cards, so this morning I said:

“Right, are either of you bringing in Valentines today?”
“No,” they chorused cheerfully.
“Okay then.”

I did not say “Well, how will you feel if you’re the only child who doesn’t give cards in your class?” For one thing, the four-year-olds won’t notice. For another, the six-year-olds probably won’t either. And for the most part, I don’t like being held hostage by Hallmark, the craft industry, the school, and some imaginary set of judgemental parents for yet another thing to think I should nag my children about if I want to be a good mother.

My children did not bring in any cards today. I’m fine with that. (But if I meet you I’ll probably apologise profusely, just to be on the safe side.)

Official

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The people in the waiting room had taken the American government’s vague requirement to be “properly attired” in a fascinating variety of ways. There was a diminutive, aged Indian woman in a pale blue sari with silver embroidery. There were men in suits. There was a Rastafarian in his best dreadlock-covering hat, his best leisure wear and silver chain. There were women clearly dressed in their “good” dark-denim jeans with a plain sweater and clogs. There was Sunday-best and dressed-for-work. Some people kept their important documents in a plastic bag, some held manila envelopes. Mine were in a green cardstock file folder.

Mostly people came and went through the heavy door at the back of the room without expression, without incident. I read my book and tried to ignore the 24-hour news channel exploring an unimportant incident in far too much depth, from all the wrong angles. A young black woman bounced out of the room, smiling and making jubilant motions in the direction of her husband, who was minding the baby. She had obviously dressed with care: her tiny frame sported a shiny, teal, drainpipe-legged pantsuit, finished off with bright white bouncy sneakers. Her long cornrow braids shook with triumph as she kissed her little boy.

I had gone through at least three outfits the night before, rejecting the trousers that don’t really fit any more because it was eight years and two babies ago when I used to wear them to work, and ended up in the exact outfit I wore for my mother-in-law’s funeral last February: purple dress, teal slim cardigan, black boots. I was comfortable and felt like myself, not some other version of me that’s not around any more or never was. And I looked as if I’d made an effort, which is all that “proper attire” turned out to mean.

My name was called. I followed the lady back to her room, where she shuffled and hole-punched and checkmarked pieces of paper as she asked me rote questions in a routine voice. First I had to stand up and promise to tell the truth, as if that would make any difference to an unscrupulous person. She wrote with her left hand at right angles to the pages, initialing and circling and numbering in red ink as she went, checking a whole row of boxes at once to catch up to what I’d already answered. I remained calm and collected and was a model student, getting all my civics questions right first time, even that elusively random number of Representatives in the House: 435. I wanted to say “Guam. Ask me the one about Guam. And that Benjamin Franklin was the first Postmaster General of the United States. Those are my favourites,” but I didn’t, and she didn’t.

Then she asked me about my family, and whether I’d ever been in prison, and whether I’d ever conspired against the goverment, or been a Communist, and some other questions. And then told me that she’d be recommending that I be granted what I had come for. I could take the Oath at two this afternoon if I liked.

I didn’t like. My town has a Naturalization ceremony once a month and I’d assumed I’d do it at that; I hadn’t planned to be away all day. Beyond that, I wasn’t ready to seal the deal just yet. One step at a time, without thinking too hard, is the way I’m doing this.

Midway through the questions, I had almost started thinking about what I was doing, as she leafed through my Irish passport looking for stamps and dates. I don’t have to give my passport to them, I’m allowed to keep it. I’ll never not be Irish. I just don’t like that one line that goes “I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen…” That’s a lot to take on. That’s a lot to ask.

I’m just going to say it and not think about it, which I’m sure is exactly not what the people intended, but there you go. It makes sense to do this, it’s the practical thing to do for our family, to make sure we can stay here, where we’ve made our home, as long as we want to rather than finding ourselves chucked out at some sudden date if things go wrong and funding goes away and the letter of the law must be adhered to. I’m a sensible person. In the end, it makes no difference to my day-to-day life. America needs me, I tell myself, to be a sensible liberal-leaning democrat-voting, atheist, lactivist supporter for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

I’ll say it, and I’ll do it.

But always and forever, if you cut me, I’ll bleed green.

Homework, by popular demand*

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*at least, one Lovely Commenter asked for it. But this is the abridged version – I took out a big wodge of irrelevant ranting and self-doubt.

**********

Oh God, Homework. I spent all afternoon yesterday stating my expectations – that Dash would start his homework now. Now after this snack. Now after this one game. Now in time to watch the TV show. As soon as dinner was done. He agreed, or said nothing, and then he just ignored it, and me, over and over and over. I threw in the towel.

I hate homework, but maybe there’s more to it than that. I am the sort of person who does things first to get them out of the way: I used to eat my vegetables first so I could enjoy my dinner once they were gone; I used to do my math homework first to get it over with. To me, this seems like a good way to work, and the ethos and habit I want to pass on to my children.

But I know not everyone functions this way. (Their father did his math homework first too, but in his case because it was his favourite. I’m not sure what he did with his vegetables. Probably dropped them stealthily under the table.) Maybe Dash is just the sort of person who needs to leave things till the last minute. Maybe he’ll pull spectacular all-nighters in college. Maybe he’ll work up to the wire on every deadline and his work will be great because of it.

I just don’t believe that can be true. How can you work up to the wire and have time to make your work as good as it should be? Is this a case of nature not nurture, or can good work habits be instilled at an early age to avoid all that nasty fussing over last-minute deadlines later?

This morning, Dash did his homework after breakfast, for his father (I was still in bed; Mabel slept well but I had insomnia), with little or no fuss. My new plan is two reminders an evening that homework exists, and one in the morning. If he sleeps late and doesn’t have time for it, that will be his problem, not mine.

Will report back. In the meantime, I’d really like to know your opinions. Are you an in-good-time-er or a last-minute-er? Do you think you could be the other if you tried hard enough, or is it hard-wired?

Deceptemuffin

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Today I was helping at a bake sale in aid of Mabel’s nursery school.

Someone came up with the idea of a bake sale last autumn, and when the donations started coming in, we wondered why we had never done this before. Clearly, the parents of the nursery school are in need of some sort of baking intervention, I said in October, as I put my double batch of lemon scones down on a table already groaning under a surfeit of cakes, cookies, muffins, and pies.

So for today’s event, I didn’t go quite so overboard, and confined myself to just a single batch of banana-butterscotch muffins. Banana seemed to be the theme of the day, as there were also banana-oat-bran, banana-nut, and gluten-free banana muffins on the table, in addition to an impressive selection of chocolate-chip cookies, brownies, chocolate-brownie cookies, chocolate fudge squares, and a few delicious outliers in the form of snickerdoodles, coconut macaroons, and even soft pretzels.

Thing was, as the banana-nut muffins were arrayed on the table in their individual zippy bags, with hand-written labels listing the ingredients, we all remarked on their impressive size and uniformity. In fact, they looked very much like the sort of banana-nut muffins you might buy at the supermarket. Very, very much. In addition to which, the ingredients listed both milk and soy; as a parent of a child with allergies pointed out, nobody bakes with both of those at once. You use soy to replace dairy, unless you’re a supermarket who uses soy because everything has soy in it.  We were pretty much, say 99.8%, sure that someone had just bought a batch of supermarket muffins and repackaged them for the sale.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with that. Nowhere is it written that donations for the bake sale have to be homemade. If you want to help with the fundraising effort, it’s perfectly kind of you to buy something – something you know many people like – and give it to the school to sell on. They were priced at $2 each, so we probably even turned a profit on the original outlay. And the customers didn’t seem to mind – I was astounded at how many people’s eyes lit up as they scanned the table, spotted the giant, “Texas-sized” muffins, and decided one of those was exactly what they needed. It’s bigger, it must be better. I need bigger. Everyone needs bigger.

I didn’t point out to any of these people that the muffins were clearly not home-made. Maybe they knew that. Maybe they haven’t eaten as many store-bought banana-nut muffins as I have in my time, and don’t recognise them. Maybe they don’t care, they just like things that are big. But I did feel that we were duping our generous customers somehow by providing these at a stand otherwise full of honest-to-goodness home-baked goodies.

(I reserve judgement on the samoas that had been put two-by-two into small sandwich bags and marked at 50c apiece. I’ve seen recipes for samoas (reknowned as girl-scout cookies) online, and they were donated by a student’s grandmother. Grandmothers have time for meticulous baking, right?)

What do you think? Would you donate store-bought goods to a bake sale? Does it matter, so long as it raises funds for a good cause?