Hold the Meat – School Lunch

While there are many downsides to growing up as a vegetarian — the inane questions, the feelings of exclusion — there are definitely some up-sides. My colon probably isn’t going to fall out of my body, for instance. Also, I never really had to deal with school lunch. Sure, I would partake in “cheese pizza day” now and then, but for the most part, I bypassed the horror — the gray hamburgers, mystery meat, and the like.

From what I remember, I generally brought my lunch: sandwich, fruit, drink, and generally some sort of Little Debbie snack — usually a Swiss Roll. Perhaps it wasn’t the most nutritional thing in the world, but come on. You know who’s eating the most nutritional thing in the cafeteria? The weirdo, that’s who. The moderately unhealthy bagged lunch is better than the crap they serve to the kids, but allows you to fit in just enough, to not be pointed at and whispered about. It’s a beautiful thing.

In high school, I was proud of the fact that I never went through the lunch line. In four years, I never saw the giant vats of God-knows-what, or the shiny silver warming trays. Generally, I’d either bring my lunch, or if it was senior year, occasionally my friend and I would skip and go to the nearby Subway.

However, if I couldn’t get my act together in the morning to pack something, or we didn’t want to risk d-hall (what my school called detention), I would buy lunch from the cafeteria. Now, I know I said I never went through the lunch line. I didn’t — my school also offered a salad bar. To some people now, that may not seem weird, or special in any way. High school today probably has sushi bars, for Christ’s sake. But ten years ago, it was absolutely monumental.

My school actually offered a (uh, relatively) fresh and healthy alternative to school lunch! My friends and I were ecstatic, to the point that when they tried to take it away (probably because of cost and the fact that it also included pudding, which some people would just load onto all of their dishes and call it a day), we lobbied to have it reinstated.

While it wasn’t all sunshine and roses in the cafeteria (junior year, my friend was messing around with a cut-up soda can, and I sliced my finger open trying to get it away from him so he wouldn’t hurt himself, a move that required half a dozen stitches and a giant gauze bandage on my middle finger), it was nice to participate in a quintessential American tradition. As a child who was always jealous of the other kids who got to have happy meals and keep the super-sweet toys, it was nice to feel like I belonged — and the fact that there was no mystery meat involved was just totally a bonus.

Clacked by Kona Gallagher
on Aug 19, 2009 @ 12:00 EST5EDT