Thursday, March 23, 2006

School Lunch

I was the weird kid at school. I LIKED the school lunches - especially spagetti or turkey noodles (well, almost anything with pasta in it). I've really enjoyed the Title I dinners where we actually got to eat food from the school cafeteria during the presentations and had those giant cinnamon rolls for dessert.

My birthday is this weekend, and my son wanted to "take me to lunch" at his school. We have the monthly menu at home, so I picked today's lunch as my lunch date. I arrived a few minutes early and checked in at the front desk before going to my son's classroom. They were already lining up for lunch when I got there and when he saw me at the door, he jumped up and down in line and waved his hands around. Like wildfire it went through the line... "Zach's mom is here!", making me feel like a minor celebrity. I got in line with Zach and we all walked to the cafeteria together. My husband was waiting at the cafeteria door and joined the line too. Zach explained how they did lunch and we followed along. I paid for my husband and me and we grabbed a spoon and napkin. My husband hunted for a fork but couldn't find one and whispered to me, "just like prison!" which caused me to laugh out loud. The lunch-ladies were thrilled when we said we LOVED Beef-a-roni and whispered to us that they weren't allowed to use as much salt as we probably remembered. I whispered back that it was okay since I'm on a salt restricted diet anyway....

We WERE the stars of the day. Zach sat between us and the rest of the class jostled to sit at our end of the table, where they proceeded to bend our ears. One little girl cautioned us that if the lights went out, we were being too loud and NO ONE was allowed to talk when that happened. Not even teachers! It was absolute magic when it actually happened. It was like someone hit the mute button, except for my husband who was in the middle of saying "Hi, Will!" to one of our son's friends. Everyone in the cafeteria heard him say Will's name and Zach turned around and hissed "Quiet!" at his daddy.

It was funny. I only knew a couple of kids in his class because they'd been there from daycare with my son, but I knew a lot of the other kids just from his descriptions of them when he talks about his day at school. This one has to be Brittany, and the girl across from me likes Zach but he's not sure he likes her (that would be Rickie), and Elijah has a twin in another class who looks just like him...

It was so much fun! I will have to do this a couple more times before school is over. And the food was as good as I remembered it to be...

1 comment:

Alice in Wonderbread said...

How fun! I loved hot lunch too, fish-wiches and mock chicken legs. And oh those pan rolls- those parker house pan rolls.