By Jennifer Worrell

As a second grade teacher, I remember planning ways to torture parents improve student learning with monthly projects. I assigned salt dough maps, egg biographies, dioramas, and model projects to propel parents off the deep end my children’s education to the highest possible level. I then married a man with children enrolled in my school and had to figure out how to complete my own horseshit assignments.

My first project as a new stepmother was a salt dough map of Virginia. As my stepson and I rolled out the dough, I fantasized about how kick-ass myBig T’s map would look. When I tried to cut out the Eastern Shore, the dough rose up around the blade and flipped me the bird. I muddled my way through, overlapping stuck pieces of dough until the Virginia that I created resembled some sort of triangular-shaped vagina completely wrecked by multiple childbirths.

“That looks like shit,” my husband helpfully noted.

“Do it yourself then,” I said, handing him the knife. He made one weak attempt at cutting the dough.

“Screw this,” he said. My husband took the paper template and headed for the barn and his tools. When he returned, he held a piece of wood shaped like Virginia.

“Behold,” he said. “the map.”

“But, Daddy,” Big T. whined, “it has to be made from salt dough, not wood!”

“We’ll cover the wood in salt dough—it’ll be perfect,” my husband said. Within the hour, we had created the most amazing topographical map of Virginia in the history of fourth grade. We kept Virginia, Not Vagina displayed on our stair landing for two years. My stepdaughter, Big A. turned it in when she hit fourth grade. [Read more...]