First Days, Again
One of the kickers of being a teacher is that, unlike your students, you often have several first days of class. I’ve had quite a few “first days” at Brainfood, each with its own charms and pitfalls. In my rookie year at Brainfood, I bit my lip with nerves and obsessively counted the mixing bowls. My second year, teaching solo for the first time, I forgot to eat lunch and nearly got drowned out by my own rumbling stomach while explaining our attendance policy. Third through fifth years got better. I moved up from a smaller, older kitchen to a larger, brighter one for a few years and watched new students marvel at the expanse of stainless steel countertops when they walked in the door. Then I taught in an empty Sunday school classroom (i.e., not a kitchen at all), and spent the first day showing my students how to set up portable burners and stack the pint-sized chairs in the corner of the room to give us more space. And this year, just this Monday, I started first day of Brainfood classes in a completely different way: outside.
After many first days of class, I’m proud to welcome in a new class of Brainfood teachers who spent this week doing what I once did: printing recipes, checking class lists, and obsessively counting all those bowls in preparation for students’ arrival. Armed with the sunniest of dispositions and a deep passion for building a good food community for D.C. youth, these ladies (yes, ladies, all) are running the Brainfood show in our three kitchens. So while they spent their afternoons this week putting the final touches on posters and setting out ingredients for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, I got to post up outside.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t setting out a picnic blanket or anything. I hung signs directing students to the kitchen door. I fielded calls from newbies who weren’t sure which metro exit to take. I threw on my Brainfood chef’s coat and waved down any students wearing Bell uniforms who ventured within 50 yards of the Columbia Heights parking lot on the off chance that they were looking for the Brainfood kitchen. Many weren’t. But some students, clutching their permission forms, walking fast to get to Brainfood by 4, looked relieved to let me direct them the last bit of the way.
Mostly, during my short pre-class stint as a parking lot greeter, I enjoyed a rare quiet moment to appreciate what a first day looks like from a slightly different vantage. As I watched all the new faces trickle in, hopeful, apprehensive, shy, and eager, I remembered a Kurt Vonnegut quote that a friend recently shared with me.
“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”
At first read, it seemed like a sweepingly romantic call to action, whatever your type of positive action happens to be. But standing in the sun on a warm October day, waiting for the first day of Brainfood to happen, the sentiment struck me as more playful, maybe even a little winkingly clever. Like my uncle’s knowing assertion that only the bravest kids try anchovies. Like when your best friend goads you into talking to that boy to show how much you don’t like him.
What if this is the bait and switch that we all secretly want? We sign up for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies on day one. We stick around, and then somewhere between mincing onions and Fake Flake Fried Chicken, we find that we’re part of a bigger thing completely. Maybe this year, new Brainfood students will figure out what those “many things” they should do with their lives are. Maybe this year, we’ll build one more community to add to D.C.’s good food landscape. There’s so much ahead. But first there’s just this: welcoming new students, learning all the names, standing in a parking lot, squinting into the sun and guessing who will walk up next, and cookies. So many cookies.
Here’s to everyone who came out for the first day, and to all the amazing Brainfood staff and supporters, new and old, who made that first day happen. And cheers to many more first days for all of us.
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