Sugar Baby...

Another elementary school memory...

My second (or fourth maybe?) grade teacher used to call the kids who didn't come to school when it rained (this was LA, it doesn't rain there often, people DIE when drops of water fall out of the sky!) Sugar Babies.

I laughed along with the rest of the class but honestly had NO IDEA why the woman was calling these kids candy. I think it was 20 years later when I finally figured out what she was trying to say. It was one of those rare times when, as an adult, there was television around me on a regular basis. A Hawaiian comic was announcing some show or another as he sat on some rocks in the middle of a running spring. As the commercial "ends" he shouts out, "Now gemme outta here, honey, sugga melts!"

Before this commercial enlightened me, the "Sugar Baby" name tag made me come up with two possible definitions (cuz I was certainly not going to show my ignorance and ask! This was the 80s, it was not cool to ask questions about common idioms cuz it meant you might not know the language, and if you didn't know the language you were a second-language-learner/off the boat/wetback that NO ONE would talk to. Nice, huh? Friendly people at my East LA school, lemme tell ya'.) So right, I was thinking maybe the candy melts in water or something? Something to do with water, of course.

As the years passed and I heard the same phrase from others I thought about Sugar Daddies, the non-candy variety, and how they were connected to the babies...the same link above explains the real history of "Sugar Babies:"

Sugar Babies were young women on whom middle-aged
"Sugar Daddies" spent bundles of money.

Hmmm, I doubt my teachers were accusing these children of being spoilt by middle-aged men. EEEUUUUUUWWW, if they were. Possibly it's the case of using the wrong phrase to simply state that these kids were so spoiled, or maybe delicate? That they just couldn't go out in the rain and make it to school.

So it's June 10th, KIP day, and I'm at home...cuz sugar does melt people...and it doesn't look all that pretty out to go sit on damp grass and meet and knit with others. Sorry.

Instead I'm going to go to Home Depot, maybe a Nursery and possibly Sears with Andy and knit in public in those places, indoors, not in the rain. Cuz I feel stuffed up and tired as is. Now, in my 30s I can add the third reason those kids didn't go to school in the rain: THEY'D GET SICK AND DIE. Cuz remember rainy days in elementary school? Especially if you had to walk home? Puddles to be jumped into? Drops finding their way down your collar or down your back? Wet socks, drenched shoes? What fun! But the next day? Snivelly noses and temperatures. AND THE SAME PARENTS THAT SENT US TO SCHOOL IN THE RAIN SENT US TO SCHOOL SICK! Or so that was my experience :).

Happy Knit in Public Day! Knit a stitch or two somewhere public-like, it's quite fun :).