The Lunch Time Musings of A 17 Year Old

There is a place that every child dreams of, one time that remains sacred, it’s the mention of this spot that itches at the minds of grade-schoolers, and is the vicinity where immature crushes, childish torments, and the realities of life slap each generation’s slew of youth in the face. Through the heavy scents of overcooked meat and the feel of the thin and soggy pieces of bread, reside the memories of the survivors of the public school system. Once, I too strode the orange carpeted halls of Griffin Creek Elementary, to make my way to the dirty blue linoleum patches and whitewashed outer reaches of the cafeteria, where I too—like the generations before me— left some of my childhood innocence behind.

Everyday my mom would make my lunch, this meant I didn’t have to wait in line for it, and in turn that meant I could get a good seat. Through the socialistic system the first grade employed, it was heavily recommended that we sit with our class. I always sat by my friends, and seeing as I was a thick glasses wearing Amazon girl (as I spent much of my youth viewing the tops of my peers’ heads) my friends were also—in some respects—strange. Together we sat at the head of the table and ate our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches like dainty queens and kings. For that, I earned an unnamed respect from my peers. On my blurry thrown I demanded fair treatment, once kissing a boy to prove that he was appreciated, once cutting my hair to match my tormented friend’s boy cut, and once searching though trash cans to find a missing watch.

The plastic tables and bouncy yellow cheese of the Griffin Creek Cafeteria are still like vivid colors of a Crayola set painted across my memories and dreams. I remember the Friday fifty cent ice creams where I unwittingly had my change pillaged from me. I am still haunted by the tiny red speck that sat high on a far wall, that everyone called Larry the Lost Gummy Bear, and the ghost stories spread by the older kids about the chocolate milk being cow’s blood (we still all drank it anyways). In order to preserve our eternal glory, we all had our turn carving our names in the green paint of the cabinets. The bloody knees, fistfights, and “no-run” tag games were no match for those twenty minutes of growing up. Everyday fighting the bullies and the bossies, acquiring new vocabulary words such as ‘rad’ and ‘crap’, having bouncy cheese contests, and attempting to schmooze the cafeteria ladies for the big piece of pizza became a part of life for the common grade-schooler. So now, where ever life decides to take us, we can all know that at one point all of us kids were on common ground.