Poptarts

So I walk into this class I'm taking on food writing. Why am I taking a class on food writing? Kinda has to do with the fact that I didn't know it was about food writing (the title of the class is very deceiving). The professor says "I'm going to give you a sample of a great American food, and then you're going to write about it for 15-20 minutes." I was freaking out because its hard for me to focus on something uninteresting for more than 30 seconds, and writing about this great American food for 20 minutes was intimidating. When I saw what we were writing about, I wanted to immediately drop the class.

Plates were passed around of store-brand poptarts, or, toaster pastries. Strawberry to be exact. What we came up with was kind of funny. Who knew there would be so many different views on poptarts?

I started my writing with "Poptarts: the great American pastry. Mass produced and sold as a quick breakfast for all ages." I had two good sentences. They were good because they were funny. I thought it was a serious assignment or I would have had more. They were along the lines of "There's sprinkles on top of the hard and very sugary "icing". Well, they're jimmies if you're from Philly. They're not really sprinkles though; they are more like old pop rocks gone stale."

Some people wrote about how poptarts bring them back to their childhood. Well, I must still be in childhood, because Brown Cinnamon Sugar poptarts and chocolate milk (low-fat of course) is one of my favorite breakfasts. One person wrote about how much they hate poptarts and how her boyfriend is a poptart savant. She said S'mores poptarts were bad so I felt she was a trustworthy writer. Some people liked the icing; one person was mature because they didn't like the icing. One person had NEVER had a poptart before! NEVER. I was surprised, sorta, but I don't think he's from America (the accent and lack of deodorant tipped me off) so I guess its a plausible thing.

There was another view. One I was going to take, but the prof asked us to describe the poptart and I took that literally. Poptarts can describe America, almost like handmade pasta can describe Italy. They are quick, easy, and lazy. Poptarts hold almost no nutritional value but are still marketed as "part of a balanced breakfast". Uneducated people don't know that their kids need a big ole vitamin pill and a laxative washed down with orange juice to balance out the poptarts. But poptarts are also something that bring the public together. Man, if you're handing out free poptarts, all kinds of people will come enjoy them. Kid, older people, homeless people, black, white, hispanic, immigrant, Jew, Christian, vegetarians (maybe), vegans (probably not), wealthy, poor, middle-class. So are poptarts good or bad? It's kind of like asking if America is good or bad. It's both I think. Certainly not perfect. The parallels are actually kind of scary. At least a poptart never invaded another country!

Who knew you could write for 20 minutes about poptarts?

Happy Friday everyone!