Eating Plasticine and Getting Paid for It

There was an incident in my classroom last week in which a student held up a ball of plasticine and announced to his table group, “Who will pay me to eat this?”

Upon hearing this, I rolled my eyes and said, “G, no one’s eating plasticine and no one’s paying you.” I turned away, thinking the issue was done.

Not so. G. found a buyer who slipped him a twoonie to eat the non-toxic glob of moulding clay (thankfully it was non-toxic – I had to rummage for the package to check this). This from a kid who refuses to eat oranges at the bottom of the snack bin because too many kids’ hands have come in contact with them.

Now, when I was at school, I remember there was a boy who ate glue. And I seem to remember stories about the slightly socially-off kids eating chalk and the dried macaroni from art projects. But to eat gross things for money? Isn’t that going a bit far?

A colleague pointed out that this could be a result of those shows like Fear Factor where people perform unsavoury feats in order to win large amounts of money at the end. Fear Factor came at the beginning of the reality show craze and sparked several editorials about the “dumbing down” of television. What happened to showing off your knowledge during Jeopardy? What about figuring out a phrase with only a few letters, a la Wheel of Fortune? Has the current generation of children been dumbed down so much that earning money by doing disgusting things is now perfectly normal?

Then I remembered a guy I knew in high school, who happened to be in the Gifted programme, who drank a concoction of gravy, ketchup, vinegar and pop for two dollars in grade ten. So maybe it’s just the joy of being gross that some people possess. Maybe kids have always found it fun to partake of repellent pursuits (it would certainly explain many university hazing activities). Maybe eating plasticine is an easy way to make a couple of bucks.