If you remember, the cafeteria was in the elementary building, so you had to walk up two flights, cross the bridge, then down 3 flights. I’m sure the stairwell racket invoked images of stampeding cattle. Ya! Get ’em up, Move ’em Out!! Rawhide!!!
You have to realize that lunch was a 360-degree change from carrying your Batman lunchbox, complete with Robin thermos bottle. Now you paid cash for a hot lunch of God-knows-what. You could always get PB&J, but that got old fast.
In the old man’s house, we never ate ethnic foods. Chinese people were deceitful bastards, Italian food was bad, Mexican/Indian restaurants didn’t exist. Pizza was starting to make inroads into the old man’s refined palette. No fast food in our area. The closest thing was a take out joint not far from the junior high called Chicken Delight. They served tubs of fried or BBQ’d chicken, or ribs.
So now I’m thrown into this lunchroom, never having tried 90% of what they serve. I ate steaks, hamburgers, pork chops, hot dogs and the occasional fried flounder–that’s all. Rich boys didn’t have prejudiced/racist fathers, I guess. They ate anything, unless it ressembled cast-offs from a slaughter house.
“Oh my God, what IS this shit??? Roadkill?”
To tell the truth, I don’t remember much about what I threw down my gullet (the pizza was good, and so was the meatloaf.) I never liked onions, and garlic made my stomach hurt. Lunch time was memorable (and I use the term loosely) not for the food, but the politics of sitting.
If seventh grade girls were bitches, seventh grade boys were fucking assholes. “You can’t sit there. Those seats are saved” 8 empty seats, oh sure. “This is the cool table. Go find somewhere else.” And that lunchroom was PACKED–as I’ve been saying, the planning put into this merger amounted to a thimble. Easily 100+ kids in each shift and the room maybe sat 120. You might not be able to find a seat.
The real crushing blow was if you sat anyway, the whole table got up and left, moving en masse to another table or walking to trashcans and standing there finishing food before leaving as a pack. I know; it happened to me more than once, and that I also was part of a pack that stood up and left. In retrospect, half of the situation was that rich town’s school was huge (look back to find the photo I posted), while ours was 7 rooms. The boys and girls already had 6 years of forming friendships and cliques, now who are these dickheads that think they’re level with me? Not from my town? Scram, stupid. Xenophobia on a micro scale, where were sociology nerds when you need them?
MARK IT DOWN!!
Gotta admit, choking back tears could be tough; but my shell was still hardening.
And then you had to be in the right clique to hang out in the halls after lunch before going back across the street.
I’m not so naive to think girls were that much better than us.
The foon made appearances now and then, as would a few brave teachers. Oh Lord, who will save us from this nightmare?
Somehow word got out about asshole rich boys and girls, so after only a month, we got a lunchroom cop. A retired old cop, to be precise: Mr. Brown. Yes, sports fans, we were indeed fucked.