The One About Eating Grass

When I was a small and impressionable child, my childhood best friend told me how delicious grass tastes.

CHILDHOOD BF: Grass tastes so good!

As a small and impressionable child, I naturally didn't believe anything that anybody else told me. I had to disbelieve everything until I proved it for myself. So the best course of action to prove or disprove Childhood BF's claim was obviously to eat some of the grass that grew on the soccer field of the elementary school.

Childhood BF explained that in order to properly consume a lawn, one must not eat an entire blade of grass but only the tender white part at the tip of the root.

I selected a likely blade. Carefully I loosened it from the dirt, being careful not to break it off above the root. Delicately I bit the tender white part from the greenery. I chewed it. I swallowed. And-

"You're right!" I exclaimed. "Grass does taste so good!"

For several days, we spent our recesses eating grass. As we ate, we talked about how delicious the grass was and wondered if it could be improved upon.

After some debate, it was decided that the only thing that could improve grass was sugar. Sparkling sugar, snuck by the spoonful from the canister in the cupboard above the stove or poured from pink paper packets at a restaurant dinner. It tasted like dust from an angel's wings.

Yes, Childhood BF and I agreed, sugar would be just the thing to go with our grass roots. But since we couldn't get sugar during first-grade recess, we made do without.

One day, our teacher told our class that we were allowed to stay at recess for five extra minutes aka until the "late bell." Happily, we looked forward to five extra minutes of grass consumption.

This recess was also the recess that the other kids finally noticed the two girls eating the soccer field.

CLASSMATES: What are you doing?

US: Join us!

As a child, I had like this irresistible magnetism that caused people to go along with my ideas. I don't know where it came from or how it worked, but the force of this power caused three or four other kids to suddenly start eating grass, too.

We told them that we did this every recess. They thought that was awesome. We explained that sugar would go great with grass. They thought that was legit.

The recess bell rang.

CLASSMATES: (start to leave)

US: Where are you going?

CLASSMATES: The bell rang.

US: But remember? Mrs. First-Grade Teacher said we could stay out until the late bell!

CLASSMATES: Oh yeah! (go back to eating grass)

Every five minutes, another bell would ring, and our classmates would start to leave. But Childhood BF and I would sing, "It's not the late bell yet!" and then they would stay and continue to nibble tender white tips off grass roots with us.

To be clear: Childhood BF and I were not tricking our classmates. We were so caught up in the grass that none of the bells seemed late enough to us.

We were terribly surprised when Mrs. First-Grade Teacher came outside to collect us.

I can only imagine what she thought when she found her wayward students sitting in a circle on the soccer field, eating grass. I have to imagine because I don't remember her reaction. All I remember is that we weren't punished (and that it was neither the first nor last time that I received no punishment for a delinquent act I committed in elementary school. But those are stories for another time).

However. Let it be noted in the annals of time that after that recess, Childhood BF and I never ate grass at recess again.