Oops

I was bad. I missed four (count them, four) days. And I'm late with this one. I have excuses galore in my pocket. They include barely functioning internet, serious family drama, and cross-state travel.

But I loathe giving excuses. I hate it. I might even fear it just a little. And unlike my irrational, unfounded, and completely strange fear of the ocean (see a few posts ago), I know exactly where this fear stems from.

It was middle school. Eighth grade. In middle school, everyone went through a forced hell called FACE--Family and Consumer Education. This class is presented as preparation for "real" life. In actuality, this involved pillow-sewing, cookie-baking, checkbook-balancing, and creepy robot babies that supposedly keep hormonal middle schoolers celibate. Right.

Anyways, the most ambitious project we had to undertake in preparation for life outside of the cozy world of middle school was The Restaurant. And yes, it was capitalized, treated with a reverence usually saved for Our Lord Above and The Jonas Brothers. The Restaurant project was legend at my middle school, promoted in the local paper, drawing crowds, the culmination of weeks of planning.

What it was was this. The entire class worked together to develop an idea for a restaurant, work out all the logistics, and open one morning for breakfast to the school, parents, and the community. (Why everyone was trusting enough to eat food prepared by a bunch of 13-year-olds I'll never know.)

My class picked a tropical theme. The Hula Hut or some such thing. And everyone got a job. I, as a responsible, A-student, was front manager. I had to manage the wait staff and the bussers, keep an eye on the hostess, and liaise with the back manager.

We spent weeks preparing. Designing menus, developing and pricing items, decorating. And then we had a practice run--teachers came, ate, critiqued. Tensions were high, nerves frayed.

Of course things went wrong. One of the cooks had a meltdown and burnt a whole batch of eggs. One of the waiters dropped a whole tray of dishes. The typical. And as front manager, I had the pleasant task of trying to placate hungry teachers.

There was one teacher. Mr. Fry. When I had to explain to him that his food would take a few extra minutes because of a problem in the kitchen, and that I was truly sorry, I received no sympathy, no kindness. I believe his exact words were, "A competent manager doesn't make excuses--they find solutions." Which aside from being really annoying, was wholly unproductive, as there really wasn't much my 13-year-old self could do aside from offering a free fruit juice/coffee/tea with his breakfast, which I had already done.

Despite the relative un-usefulness of his admonishment, it's stuck with me. I hate having to make excuses, mostly because I'm afraid someone else will belittle me for my lack of solution-finding ability. And I blame Mr. Fry.

He was a crappy teacher anyway.