Us Talking About Spam
Words by Hank Richardson | Published by Antonella Mutti
This wasn’t just a class.
It had a time slot.
It technically had a syllabus.
But what it became was something far more suspicious.
They came to play. From Miami to Atlanta to Texas — Hank and the students — showing up not just with laptops, but with curiosity. And the laughter? Real. The smiles? Also real. The kind that cannot be staged without a Hollywood budget and better lighting.
And that’s the point.
Laughter in that room wasn’t distraction — it was ignition. It was the audible sound of fear packing its bags. It was proof that minds were opening at the exact same moment faces were. Smiles weren’t casual. They were confirmations. Quiet acknowledgments that something electric had slipped into the room and no one had the good sense to stop it.
We weren’t “covering material.”
We were energetically conspiring.
We were poking at the ordinary with a stick just to see if it would blink.
The assignment? Rebrand and package SPAM.
Yes. SPAM.
Emma brought it to us first — the facts, the history, the milestones. After that, it was theater. One minute it was a can. The next it was a Depression-era overachiever. A wartime traveler. A pantry philosopher with tenure and absolutely no apologies.
SPAM, it turns out, has seen things.
Ellen chimed in for all of us: “It stands for SPiced hAM!”
Pause for the raised eyebrow.
And yet — last year alone, 404,000,000 cans were eaten across 44 countries. That’s 12.8 cans every second.
That’s not trivial.
That’s gravity.
Nicole saw the crack forming — the way ideas split open the moment you dare to take them seriously — and she widened it. Because ideas are like eggs. Once they break, you cannot put them back in their shells and politely pretend breakfast never occurred.
And somewhere in the middle of this she declared, prophetically, “Indigo is the color of silence.”
Just like that, the color palette staged a coup.
Beige became bold. Shelf-stable became culturally unstable — in the most delightful way possible. The can was no longer passive. It had opinions.
Delaney threaded imagination seamlessly through the improbable. BBQ chicken in a can? Of course. Why not. She didn’t suggest it. She testified to it. She spoke about flavor like it was destiny waiting patiently for packaging approval.
And Giovanni, naturally, zoomed out.
Global views of SPAM. Asia. Latino countries. Places where it isn’t a novelty but a necessity. Where it appears on real tables, in real kitchens, in real recipes. He reminded us that value is contextual. That what one group overlooks, another integrates seamlessly into daily life.
As Jabrea wisely observed — with the calm clarity of someone who knows what matters — “SPAM is a survival food.”
Which is not a small sentence.
Because survival is serious business. You don’t dismiss survival. You respect it. You elevate it. You redesign it.
And maybe — just maybe — SPAM isn’t fixed at all.
Maybe it’s migratory.
Maybe it’s misunderstood.
Maybe it’s been waiting patiently on a shelf for someone brave enough to ask a better question.
And that’s how it happens.
One student brings the history.
Another cracks the shell.
Another starts a color rebellion.
Another marinates belief.
Another reframes the globe.
And suddenly a can of meat becomes a philosophical event.
The room shifted. The mood changed. It stopped feeling instructional and started feeling electric.
Because creativity does not knock politely. It barges in when PLAY is invited.
Creativity is what happens when you decide something familiar is unfinished.
It’s what happens when you look at a can of pink meat and think, “You’re not done yet.”
It’s the small rebellion each student steps into when they ask, “What else could this be?”
And here’s the quiet truth —
Play is not the opposite of rigor.
Play is the rehearsal for insight.
When a class stops behaving like a class and starts behaving like a sandbox for big ideas, something wakes up. Fear softens. Ideas stretch. Students lean forward instead of back. And suddenly even dependable, shelf-stable SPAM becomes a portal.
Because this was never about processed pork.
It was about permission.
Permission to question.
Permission to experiment.
Permission to unsettle what seems settled.
This is creativity.
Not cleverness for its own sake.
But the willingness to remake the familiar.
To look at the commonplace and see a runway.
To take survival food and imagine ceremony.
And the reward?
You made something.
Not just packaging.
Not just concepts.
You made possibility.
Which, if you ask the class, is far more nourishing than 12.8 cans per second.
Maybe the real assignment in life isn’t survival.
Maybe it’s learning.
Because the truest objective of life, the one hiding behind all the syllabi and seriousness is to PLAY.
So it goes.
