food haiku backstory

Back in 5th grade we got a weekend assignment from a substitute teacher to write haiku verses about food. The instructions weren't clear, or maybe I wrote them down wrong, but I do remember at the time thinking it was asking a lot, to write one verse for every letter of the alphabet (although I skipped X and Z) and each one to be about a different food.

Fortunately mum keeps almost everything from our childhood schooldays, so I was able to faithfully transcribe from the original.

The first haiku had to be written in class and shown to the teacher before we left so she could check we understood the assignment. She was freaked out by mine, for "apple", even though it was technically correct in syllables and structure. I was told to redo "A" but forgot, or maybe refused (bahaha).

I have preserved the original spelling in the haikus but for the menu/links, verse titles and filenames I've used correct spelling. All verses will have comments with them (mine, from now, and/or the teacher's from then).

Points to note: The teacher never said it had to be human food, so I included some things I knew animals ate. She also never said there should only be one food item per verse, or that the haiku didn't have to start with the name of the food. So I messed up in a few ways.

As far as I can figure, each haiku was worth a maximum of 4 points, and we lost points for bad spelling, incorrect structure or wrong number of syllables, and apparently rather randomly if the teacher didn't like our verse (regardless of its other merits). I remember being bitterly disappointed with my final mark of 50%.