Sunday, November 9, 2008

NOVEMBER 11

November 11th is fast approaching the little boxes of poppies for sale are on display everywhere.  I was in the school office the other day where I saw a young boy looking to make a donation to get a poppy. He had a toonie and before he dropped it into the donation box, he asked me how many poppies he could take for giving a toonie. I didn’t know the official answer so I told him to take one for his shirt and one for his coat. Like how many do ya need?  After that conversation, on my way back to my classroom, I must have picked  three “lost” poppies up off the ground.  Maybe a guy should have a huge stash of poppies, I had forgotten that the darn things are impossible to keep attached to your shirt!  I spent the rest of the week, pinning poppies  back onto young children’s shirts and picking them up off the ground at restaurants, the grocery store and even at the barn!  It got me thinking about all of the different strategies I have tried or seen people try, to get that poppy to say on. 

There was the “stick a little piece of eraser on the end of the pin” trick, then we tried using sticky tack, and we’ve all bent the pin upwards.  I can remember trying to manipulate the pin so that it weaved it’s way through the poppy itself (actually one of the more successful strategies.)  There’s the people who just totally give up, remove the pin and the little center, fold up the poppy and stick it in their mouths to make lips, (I have been in the frustrating place before!)  Marty told me, he used to have a little, tiny Maple Leaf pin that he would put in the middle of his poppy and secure the backing to it, he has never lost a poppy with that technique.  I can vouch for him, as I saw his poppy from last year neatly placed in the coat closet waiting to be pinned to his lapel!  Yep, he still has last years’ poppy!!!!!!!!!  I personnaly don’t mind donating the 25 cents every year to get myself a new poppy, or two, or three or however many it takes to actually have one pinned to my coat on the 11th of November!

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