Count to 100 . . .

So, I am no longer a cashier. YAY! Now, I am a Preschool Aid. Bigger YAY! I work with small children and it takes me back to my carefree days of innocence. In particular, I remembered my first grade class as a 6-year old and how great it was. Little did I know then, that I already had the awkward gene in place just waiting to come out:

In first grade we learned how to count to 100 in groups of 10. How cool is that? It's pretty cool when you're six. For one of the activities, we were required to bring 100 of the same item to help us learn to count. I really wanted to bring M&Ms or cookies or something equally awesome, but like I've posted before, there were seven kids in my family and we were on a budget. So, after talking to my mom, the only thing we could find in groups of 100 were barley pearls. You know, those things you never know what to do with but is in your food storage? Yeah. That.

So, I put my little handful of barley pearls in a Ziploc bag and skipped off to school for our activity. I must not have read the note the teacher sent home or I must have lost it or something because I walked into the room to see all the kids with awesome things on their desks. Somebody had M&Ms (my first choice), another had Oreos (second choice), some kids had baseball cards, licorice, and other assortments of awesome things on their desks.

It was only until the activity started that I realized that we were supposed to trade the things that we brought with the other kids in the class. That way, we had different groups of 10 items to help us count and then we had treats at the end. It was at the tender age of six years old that I knew what utter humiliation was. Obviously, I was that one kid that nobody traded with. I was that little awkward girl sitting at her desk trying to persuade the other kids to trade their baseball cards and oreos for barley pearls. Who wants barley pearls? Who even knows what they are in the first place?!?

Moral of the story. Always read the notes the teacher sends home with you, and always keep a secret stash of deliciousness for such occasions as that.

Do you know what barley pearls are? Do you have a secret junk drawer to keep yourself from being humiliated?