There are two things during the school day that are most exciting for kids.  Recess and lunch.  Both are times for socializing with friends and getting away from the studying for a little while.  As someone who gets to do lunchroom duty every day, it gives me time to check out exactly what kids are eating.

When I was a kid, I was always what we now call a “hot lunch kid”.  I never (and I mean NEVER) took lunch from home.  My mom was a stay at home mom, so I’m not sure why exactly, but I guess giving me lunch money was easier than packing.  So, whether I liked it or not, I ate school lunch.  I had school lunch in Mississippi where I remember having gravy over rice.  Not sure why I remember that other than I really liked it for some reason. But then I like gravy on just about anything. I ate school lunch in Colorado where the lunch ladies made homemade cookies and cakes.  “Nuff said. By the time I got to Kentucky, I just ate whatever I liked on the tray.  However, by the time I got to high school, I took that lunch money and became creative.  I could go through the line, buy some “Ho Ho’s” or “Ding Dong’s” and milk and that was the lunch of champions!  The rest of the money I kept to go towards things like the latest 45 record or cassette tape.  You have to have priorities in life.

When I started teaching school, I would take my lunch usually because it was faster than going to the cafeteria and getting in line for it.  School lunch is where I developed a lasting relationship with ranch dressing, which was the only dressing available at the school I taught at in Ohio.  Then I moved to Nebraska.  I know I’ve told this story before, but as I went through the lunch line, the lunch lady asked, “Dorothy or Ranch?”.  I asked who Dorothy was.  My Nebraska friends will laugh because she was referring to Dorothy Lynch dressing, which is kind of a watered down version of French or Catalina dressing very popular in this state.  The other eye opener was cinnamon rolls with chili.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I like both, but in the south, it’s cornbread with chili.  Or maybe oyster crackers.  Cinnamon rolls are for breakfast.  But I have to admit, after living here for 17 years, I tend to want them instead of the cornbread now.  Sweet and savory!

The one staple of lunches that hasn’t seemed to change is the combination of pizza and corn.  Why pizza and corn?  I seriously don’t know.  And of course it’s canned corn, so it has that particular “cafeteria” taste we all remember from our childhood.  Today pizza is served round, square or triangular.  Not sure why, but it is.  I have this one kid who likes to pull all the cheese off with his fingers and then lick the sauce off of the crust.  Whatever works for you, kid.  There’s the traditional turkey with mashed potatoes, chicken nuggets and breakfast for lunch, complete with salad. Salad is served with every lunch (with ranch dressing of course) because most kids will eat it and I suppose it counts as a veggie.  Thanks to some good changes, a lot of fresh fruit is served and the kids like it.  Not sure when they’ll figure out that they’ll stop wasting so many apples if they would just remember that a large number of K-2 kids are losing teeth and either can’t or don’t want to eat them.

It’s the “cold” or packed lunches that are most interesting however.  I can’t tell you how many Lunchables I see now, usually the pizza kind so they can ask an adult to open the sauce packet and they can proceed to get cheese and sauce everywhere but on the little disc of dough provided.  Those little individual fruit ups are interesting too.  While the tops keep things from leaking, it’s difficult to open them without them squirting everywhere – especially mandarin oranges.  Go-gurts are annoying and not only are they brought from home, they’re now served at lunch.  Most teachers just carry scissors with them because they really don’t just zip open.  Invented by some man I’m sure. And let’s talk about those little straws in the juice boxes, especially the angled ones that you have to get in just right, like a needle searching for a blood vein.  Because if you don’t, it also squirts all over.

There are moms who pack your basic sandwich, chips, fruit, snack kind of lunch, and then there are the gourmet moms, with their little gourmet lunch boxes where every little space is filled with beautiful finger food; fruits, veggies, cheese and meats.  All it needs is wine.  Ok, maybe in about 15 years or so. And of course, there are the lunches with little encouraging notes from mom and dad.  The little ones will ask me to read them to them.  It makes me wish I had taken the time to do that for my boys as they grew up.

So, every day is a little bit of an adventure going to the lunchroom.  Today as I walked by the second grade tables, one boy reached into his lunch bag and exclaimed, “I got a half a donut!”.  Obviously mom knows how to make her son happy.  And I see a future of ho ho’s and ding dongs in his future.