School Lunch, Part 1

It must have been good or they would have fired the cooks. Right? Actually, we did get new cooks when I was in 5^th grade, but I don’t know if the previous ones had been fired. I liked the cooks, especially Mrs. Brecken, a wide, dark-eyed, woman in her fifties, and so it was sometimes hard to look at her when I went through the line and saw canned spinach. Again. Yuck.

It was probably just the vegetables I didn’t like. That and chow mein or chop suey, whichever it was we got. Somebody said one was better than the other. I don’t remember which, but I’m pretty sure we got the other.

It was celery, meat—I think—and bean sprouts in clear gooey warm stuff poured over rice. There must have been meat. I can’t believe anyone would have eaten it with only the celery and slimy bean sprouts, which I thought were worms. Really.

Of course, I like bean sprouts now. I'm grown up.

But if I had known the word gross back then, that’s what I would have called it. I just couldn’t eat the stuff. If this was what Chinese people had to eat, then no wonder my mother always told us to think of the poor starving Chinese.

When you went through the cafeteria line, you couldn’t choose what you wanted. You had to have everything, and then you had to eat it. If you didn’t eat it—all of it—the on-duty teacher would not excuse you and you would sit in the cafeteria while everyone else went out for noon recess.

A lot went on out on the playground at lunch time. There were always some kids who just ran around with no apparent purpose, maybe chasing each other, but some played more organized games like softball, basketball or volleyball. There was paddle ball, hopscotch, tetherball, marbles, and four square.

That’s why the eating part needed to be done quickly. Some kids tried spreading their food around the plate to make it look like they’d eaten a lot. It never worked. I suppose if you could throw up on your plate, that would be an excuse not to eat your lunch. Maybe some kids did that. I think I gagged over spinach once. But if you wanted to get outside with any time for play, you just held your nose and ate fast.

Sometimes recess wasn’t worth it.