![\"pioneer_food\"](\"http:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/pioneer_food.png\" "\\"pioneer_food\\"")
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This is a slide from my third grader’s Powerpoint presentation about what the pioneers ate.<\/p>\n
Do you see anything a little weird about it? I mean, just slightly off? Now perhaps there was a small blurb in there about the Donner Party<\/a>, sure. \u00a0And I imagine that it was probably a little more educational than the way I learned about it, which was from The Shining<\/a>:<\/p>\n Wendy Torrance: Hey. Wasn’t it around here that the Donner Party got snowbound? But to list “dead friends” as a regular source of food set me into near-hysterical gales of sputtering laughter for so long that my younger daughter brought me paper towels and a drink of water out of concern. Then, of course, the family joke for the evening became cannibalism. <\/p>\n We are not a normal family.<\/p>\n At dinner, the little one decided she was too full for dessert(!). Hub and I proceeded to bicker over who would get her Worms in Dirt<\/a> and pretend to be Bear Grylls<\/a>. Just as the fight started to get heated, Jo said, “Wait, I know! Mommy can have the Worms in Dirt, and Daddy can have a Dead Friend!”<\/p>\n Daddy said, “Hmm. I don’t have a dead friend.”<\/p>\n
\nApparently my daughter is laboring under the misconception that the pioneers ate their own<\/strong>. \u00a0And she claims she read about it in a book and that her teacher told her it was true.<\/p>\n
\nJack Torrance: I think that was farther west in the Sierras.
\nWendy Torrance: Oh.
\nDanny Torrance: What was the Donner Party?
\nJack Torrance: They were a party of settlers in covered-wagon times. They got snowbound one winter in the mountains. They had to resort to cannibalism in order to stay alive.
\nDanny Torrance: You mean they ate each other up?
\nJack Torrance: They had to, in order to survive.
\nWendy Torrance: Jack…
\nDanny Torrance: Don’t worry, Mom. I know all about cannibalism. I saw it on TV.
\nJack Torrance: See, it’s OK. He saw it on the television.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n