Thievery Thursday

As many of you know, I was born and raised in Idaho.

As is the tradition of Idahoans, I was taught the way of the potato beginning in preschool and up through my Senior year in High School.

Our mascot was a tater tot, and our school fight song went,

"Oh po-ta-to, we honor you.

We'll fight to glory to keep the tuber true.

And if our op-po-nets seek to thwart our way, we'll boil them, mash them, and stick them in a stew...

Po-ta-to, we love you!"

I still remember my Senior year class schedule:

1st hour - U.S. Government, and the important role potatoes play

2nd hour - French, The myths behind the fry

3rd hour - P.E. (Potato Economics)

4th hour - English - we wrote a lot of papers about potatoes

Lunch - where we ate a lot of potatoes

5th hour - Art, spud stamping

6th hour - Anatomy of the Potato

7th hour - Tater Cookin'

You can imagine that by the time I got to 7th hour, I was all tubered out!

I remember one day in Tater Cookin', our assignment was to make scalloped potatoes in our own unique way. I was not excited about the assignment, but I went right to work. I decided that my "unique way" would be to add crushed up potato chips (the cheesy kind) on the top of my mixture. I then wandered around the classroom to see what my friends had created, and that's when I heard an explosion. My friend Kathryn, in a fit of rage, shot her dish with a potato gun!

Needless to say, she was expelled. Last I heard, she was seen working at the Instant Potato Factory downtown (oh the shame!).

Goes to show, you should never mistreat a potato.