Our cafeteria isn't quite ready for us when we first start school. We have to bring our lunches and eat in our homerooms for a while. The cafeteria itself is a makeshift gymnasium, perfect for calisthenics and close-order drill. We also play "Crab Soccer", a game played with a giant canvas ball. We sit on the floor with our arms behind us, pulling ourselves with our legs. You can only kick the ball, you can't touch it with your hands, and it's a welcome relief from all those muscle-bending exercises.
It takes a while, but the cafeteria is finished, and lunch periods can begin. The cafeteria lacks any ambiance at all. It's just a big open room with bare cinder block walls painted a kind of institutional green. Long tables in rows that remind me of the mess halls in prison movies or movies about boot camp in the army.
It's loud in the cafeteria. Dozens of voices chattering away all at once, a sudden change from the relative quiet of our classrooms.
When they begin serving us food, or at least their idea of food, it seems like most of the time we're served something made of ground beef and starch. Sloppy Joes, beef-a-roni, or chili with beans. The pizza is unlike any pizza I've ever eaten. We pour the grease off of it before even trying to eat it. Most kids eat the French fries and the hot dogs. Lunch costs 35 cents. There is a moment in time that is somewhat surreal. They serve something called Turkey On A Stick. What it is I couldn't say for sure. There's some kind of fried glob of what looks like a meat product on the end of one of those pointed wooden skewers that you usually have a candied apple on. Who thought any of us would want to eat this? I steer clear of that concoction, and it disappears from the menu rather quickly. What were they thinking with that one?
You can get an ice cream sandwich for a dime, and after a while that pretty much consists of my lunch until I start bringing my own again.
There's not much in the way of fruits or vegetables, and the small fruit cups they do have usually end up being used as missiles. The grapes, mostly and sometimes the pudding. Somebody always seems to feel the need to toss some grapes during lunch period. I guess being cooped up in the building all day creates so much tension in some of us that the only way they can release it is by throwing food.
I don't like the cafeteria. There's this unofficial pecking order in there. Nerds like me are clustered together for safety's sake, where we can talk about TV shows and comic books. We're inevitably the target of the food throwers at some point; everyone knows that nerds don't fight back.
The popular kids, the "beautiful people" are in their own section,as are the jocks and the greasers and the tough guys. The least popular kids, the "Lost Souls", must find a table that will accept at least one of them.
I do not like lunch period. We can't leave the building for some reason. In elementary school we could go outside and play in the playground and get some fresh air for a while, but here in high school I feel trapped, and the feeling is made worse because my house is only minutes away. Who would be hurt by my walking home for lunch? Why can't we go outside for a few minutes? Do they think we'll all run away?
This is far worse than the little lunch room I had to endure at the Woodbury Heights Elementary School.
I'm going to have to put up with this for six years?
There's gotta be a way out of this.
There's just got to.
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