SPAM and Cockroaches

Tonight, in the final meeting of my How To Teach Speaking and Listening class, we students demonstrated a portion of our final-project lessons plans. My partner and I had focused on teaching how to ask yes/no questions, and our demo was an abbreviated version of a Twenty Questions-like game with students guessing their partner's secret object. One of the items was a can of SPAM that I'd had on my desk at home. (This is where the eyes of any Panik reading this post perk up.)

After the demo, the student with the SPAM returned it to the bag, saying, "I haven't seen SPAM in a while."

And I said, "This can's a family heirloom. I've had it ten years."

Then I realized it was older than that. Much older. It had been a joke Christmas present that myself and each of my brothers had received one year. (We'd celebrated in Hawaii, and Hawaiians love their SPAM.) That Christmas, I was no older than eight. Which makes the SPAM twenty-one years old.

As I closed the grab bag, I thought, You've had that can of SPAM two-thirds of your life. What the hell have you done in that time?

This is a tricky question. Bryan and I often see twenty-four-year-old NFL football players on TV and say, "We've done nothing with our lives."

But if you develop the skills that were given to you, and apply them to useful means, or if you help someone, or do something larger than yourself, then you've made good use of your time. Even if you're not on TV, don't earn millions of dollars, and don't knock people over for a living.

SPAM is the food equivalent of the cockroach--it could survive a nuclear bomb, or whatever killed off all the dinosaurs. The cockroach and SPAM will both be around when we and our humble deeds and accomplishments aren't. It doesn't bother me in the least.