My grandson Keith, 7, is in second grade at LaPine Elementary School in Oregon. Like many elementary schools these days, it's an interesting and warm place to be. Projects and positive attitudes abound.
The school is collecting a million things. The things they chose to collect several years ago are bread tabs, little three-quarter inch square plastic tabs with a notch in them. Into the notch goes a twist of plastic to protect and seal the bread.
Several years ago they had about 265,000 displayed in the lobby in large jars. I was intrigued, thinking no student participating in this project will ever treat the concept of a million casually.
Keith, then in first grade, called at the beginning of one school year and asked if I would save bread tabs for his class. I agreed to try, but we get maybe three a year in our household. So I began to research the problem. I am a grandma, after all, and if the grandchildren asked me to enter a triathlon to benefit the school I would probably give it my best shot.
Locating bread tabs began to seem only slightly less difficult than the triathlon. I started with local grocers who initially had no idea what I was talking about. There isn't a precise word in our vocabulary for the bread tab, so the concept proved hard to get across. After they (maybe) understood the term they were not encouraging. They didn't know where I could get them. I was referred to various offices that turned out to be dead ends.
I hit pay dirt with a local convenience store. Someone there knew with certainty what a bread tab was, and told me they had them on some of their products. This was my first solid lead, part one of the triathlon.
I called the bread company in Grand Rapids. The operator connected me with a man named Tim in sales. Tim educated me about bread tabs. They are going out, he said. There are machines to wrap bread in coated wire twists. Cheaper and faster. But some products don't lend themselves to this-cinnamon rolls, for example.
At first Tim said he might sell me 5,000 for around $20. I was overjoyed. He informed me that his company had an outlet store in Lansing and he would send them there. I wondered briefly if purchasing bread tabs would be like my doing Keith's homework and passing it off as his. But I decided that if we were open about the source we would not be giving the boy any sort of negative moral message.
When I went to fetch the bread tabs, they were in a large cardboard carton. "No charge," said the clerk. I was incredulous.
Inside were coils of tabs, odds and ends variously colored. I crammed them into a smaller box and mailed them off. Keith became an instant celebrity. They numbered about 2,500, which the class happily snapped apart and added to the hoard. No one in LaPine Elementary had ever before delivered bread tabs in such quantity.
Thank-you cards were made and sent to Tim. Triathlon completed, I thought.
But this fall, just a few days ago a letter arrived from LaPine in after-summer penmanship. It said:
"Dear Gramoe I was wondrding if you save som bred tBS Love Keith." This manuscript was illuminated by a smiley face and five illustrations of the product, some of them works in progress.
I couldn't remember Tim's name but the receptionist at the Grand Rapids bread company rang sales and there he was. He didn't recall his kindness of last year, saying he does things of this sort quite a lot. He had been to Oregon last summer for his brother's wedding, his first trip there. Had I been to Madras, Oregon? Certainly. Turns out his brother has a restaurant in Madras that makes the best milkshakes in the world.
He'd send some more bread tabs. There were some discontinued ones somewhere around there. No charge. But I had to promise to go to the Oasis café in Madras and order a milkshake. Can do, I assured him. The grandsons are really terrific milkshake drinkers.
The box waiting at the bread factory outlet store two days later was extremely heavy. There must be thousands of them, I thought. Many more than last year. A look inside confirmed this. Large coils. Many large coils. Huge.
Keith will be a hero again. But he's only in second grade. I hope Tim doesn't change jobs any time soon. Good guys are hard to find.
Clarice Thompson is a freelance writer in Lansing, Michigan.