The Coonridge Digest: Handout overkill

Greetin’s from the Ridge.

Mrs. Wordsworth, the social studies teacher down at Coonridge High, was famous for her handouts. After burying the opening day classes with armloads of handouts, she’d hand out a handout to help her students categorize their other handouts.

Most famous was her list of Classroom Do’s and Don’ts. I’ve heard that her tome of discipline ran on for some twelve pages. Hardbound copies could be purchased for an additional fee.

Then one day Mrs. Wordsworth came to the realization that no one was reading a thing she was handing out. The students barely had time to keep up with their homework without pouring through the volumes on how to do their homework. Mrs. Wordsworth was the very definition of word overkill.

So, always willing to learn from her mistakes, last year she passed out a single sheet of paper that said:

Sit Down. Shut up. Do your work.

Every student read it. Some posted it in their lockers as a sort of a joke, but every morning there it was to remind them. A stroke of genius.

Last week the FDA mandated that yet another label was to appear on all food products beginning in 2006. From that time forward, all foods must list the amount of Trans Fats. As it is now, the consumer has to look for words like "shortening" or "partially hydrogenated vegetable oil" or "hydrogenated vegetable oil," to know if his heart is in trans-fat danger. You find the little rascals in loads of stuff including margarines, crackers, candies, baked good, snack food, fried foods, salad dressing and many processed foods…in other words, just about everything you now eat and love.

I’m a fan of the FDA and think they’ve done a passable job over the years of keeping me from eating foods I probably wouldn’t have touched anyway. And they are a bit slow (trans-fats won’t really harm us until the year 2006?) Still, like the old food-testers for the kings of ancient days, I’m glad somebody’s out there feeding deadly new products to rats instead of me.

But if I could give them just a piece of advice: take a lesson from Mrs. Wordsworth. You’ve already got too many words on a label. Face it: most of us check the picture on the label and maybe the price. The FDA states that 40% of consumers regularly check the ingredients. Yea, in your dreams, boys.

So here’s my recommendation. Take a bit of advice from the tobacco labels. Those things are specific to the point of terror. "Smoking May Cause Lung Cancer." "Cigarette Smoke Contains Carbon Monoxide." "Smoking By Pregnant Women May Result in Fetal Injury, Premature Birth, And Low Birth Weight." (The Surgeon General often gets the Caps Lock stuck on his typewriter, but the guy knows how to make a point.)

Wipe out all the other ingredients on food labels and boil them down to a Mrs. Wordsworth simplicity:

"Have You Looked At Yourself In A Swimsuit Lately?"

"When You Put On Those Slacks It Looks Like Two Cats Fighting In A Gunny Sack."

"You’ve Been Married For Eight Years And Your Wife Still Hasn’t Seen All Of You."

"When You Get Off the Merry Go Round, Does The Horse Limp?"

"Has Your Rowing Machine Ever Sunk?"

"When You Get On A Scale, Does It Give You Two Fortunes?"

"Do You Have A Hangover Before You Start Drinking?"

"When You Lay Out On The Beach, Do Kids Shout ‘Free Willy!’"

"Have You Ever Made A Hula Hoop Cry?"

No, don’t send me hate mail. I know these warnings put stretch marks on political correctness, but if the FDA really expects us to read these things, then they need to keep it simple. Besides, in the weight war, I’m on the front lines of the combat.

Quick test: list three ingredients in the last canned soup you bought… the last package of chips… the vitamins you took this morning.

The lady who teaches next to Mrs. Wordsworth is developing a three-page handout on "proper care of classroom materials." Like a newspaper columnist she thinks people will read something just because she wrote it. The school apparently supports her. They bought her a bigger trash can.

You ever in Coonridge, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.