School Lunch

The tan linoleum floor seemed to be freshly cleaned, glistening under the fluorescent lights of the Multi Purpose Room - comfortably referred to as the MPR. I took my place in line with the rest of my fourth grade class. All I needed was milk, meaning I could technically jump to the front of the line, but the last thing I wanted was to be viewed as a “cutter.” I had just about surmounted the major hurdles of being new, and wanted to keep my momentum. Today’s menu had been revealed in the morning announcements but I had forgotten. The air smelled aggressively of maple syrup, so my guess was breakfast for lunch? Sure enough, the first couple of people came filing out of the assembly line with trays full of tiny waffles and pinkish sausage. I clutched my paper sack to my chest. It had taken me approximately ten seconds my first day to deduce that colorful lunch boxes were out and paper sacks were in vogue this fall. I approached the milk cooler and looked over the options, still shocked at the amount of strawberry milk that was stocked. If this were a five star restaurant, the manager would absolutely have given a “push the strawberry milk,” speech to the servers before the dinner rush. I selected my pink carton of skim milk, an unpopular choice amongst chocoholic nine-year-olds, but still ranked high above strawberry.

Once I paid for my beverage, I turned to face the room lined with huge, foldable tables. Each hosted twelve tiny stools and were perched atop wheels which were usually in locked position, but one had to lower slowly in case a wheel lock had been overlooked. I scanned the tables until I spotted the collection of girls I had been breaking bread with for the past few weeks. I selected a seat on the end, having not gained the confidence or earned the clout for a middle seat. I claimed the tiny blue stool and immediately was aware of the agency of the seat. The wheel was unlocked. Lunch was now a twenty minute wall sit. 

Lunch is a funny thing in concept because there really isn’t a set menu. For breakfast, it’s eggs, pancakes, toast, cereal. Dinner usually consists of some kind of buxom entree and sides. Lunch is a real catch all - as evidenced by the tiny Eggos everyone was munching on around me. There is an understanding though that a sack lunch consists of a sandwich, a fruit or veggie, mayhaps a chip, and, best case, a crunchy cookie of some kind for dessert. There was so much room to fail though. At my old school, there was a girl who had celiac disease, before it became the true epidemic amongst 23 year-olds, and she would bring bologna on a rice cake for lunch. The bologna was the exact same circumference as the rice cake - was this on purpose? Even though this was merely a result of her dietary restriction, it was absolutely incorrect. I, thankfully, was free of allergy so could request a peanut butter and jelly as my main. I reached for the heaviest ziplock bag and pulled it out. My heart sunk, it felt wet. Leakage! I rummaged through my sack for napkins, which are usually packed with care by my mother. However, my mom was on her first business trip ever, and in her absence, my dad had been brought in off the bench. He was the Rudy of lunch making in the sense that he was ambitious and enthusiastic, but also in the sense that he just really wasn’t cut out for the big leagues. The peanut butter and jelly-esque sandwich I slid out of the plastic bag was monstrous in size, screaming enthusiasm. The poor Wonder bread was not up to the task, losing aggressive amounts of filling on every side. If this were a medical operation, the nurse would have been on high alert, “We are losing the patient!” I set the sandwich slop to the side, hoping there was something a little more manageable in this bag somewhere. The orange, usually packed as pre-peeled, was rolling around still dressed in its rind. Too much juice. Thankfully, the routine pretzel twists were much more difficult to fumble, though I’m pretty sure there were 100 of them shoved into their respective bag today. Just the most enthusiasm.

I popped a pretzel twist in my mouth, just as the table hit full capacity. There was enough weight now to stabilize the table, so I settled a little more comfortably into my chair. The two most popular girls were seated in the middle, gabbing away. I listened in, taking mental notes of what topics were in the zeitgeist. A second-tier-popular girl came and took the seat across from me, “They only gave me one sausage!” This blonde, bespeckled girl, had a fantastic talent for chatter. And an even more impressive talent for spitting food as she spoke. It was almost percussive the way, a word threw bits of waffle on the table, a neighboring tray, or a mirroring face. It truly didn’t matter to her who was seated across from her, so as the newbie, I appreciated the equal opportunity treatment. I was just as worthy of being spit on as anyone else in this cacophonous lunch room. 

I managed to make my way through most of my pretzels, my skim milk really doing her best to keep my throat from drying out completely. Most of my table finished their waffles and sausage patties. I am certain the girl across from me managed to litter the table with more bits of food than ended up in her stomach. I followed the crowd as they stood to dump their trays. I dropped my sack lunch in the large gray garbage can, and it landed on the bottom with a giant thud. There really must have been an entire jar’s worth of peanut butter in that thing. As we lined up near the large double doors to head to recess, I did loosen up just a little. One more lunch survived.