Table Talk
Lunching through time
IT’S MY LUNCH BREAK, and I’m trying to read bits and pieces of The New Yorker on my computer. This is the only thing I’ve been able to manage all day since feeling as though I’m a dirt floor upon which the hooves of a wild stampede have trampled. I hate being sick. Even worse, I hate being sick and having to work… with children. Thankfully, I’ve had my administrative duties all morning, therefore, allowing me little interaction with students. Reading the humor section (mostly) has ticked the hands on my watch forward more quickly than had I sat there, comatose, without it — though I’m under appreciating everything I’ve read since I am feeling like death. I fell asleep with my head on the table — twice, for about a minute each time. Occupying myself through reading was the only option for remaining part of the waking world.
Come lunchtime, I left the building to go to the main hall of our primary facility. I am also a part-time music teacher. My music “room” is really a music area in this portion of the school. It has zero privacy but so does everywhere else in this place. It’s my only option for eating, teaching, sulking, daydreaming, or “anything-ing.”
Even though it is my lunch break, I can’t eat. I’m trying tea on for size in the medicinal sense. Nothing else is working, so why not? I’m in desperate need of peace and quiet. “What the hell is that noise? I think to myself. The wall my desk rests upon would probably come crumbling down if the preschoolers connected to it decided to shriek all at once — cracker thin. I have no idea what they’re watching on the TV that unfortunately shares my wall, but it sounds like the war stories from NPR’s news of the Ukraine every morning — mixed with a battle scene from Saving Private Ryan. Did I mention this is a class of five years old?
To my left, the loveliest Chinese woman is preparing lunch in the “kitchen” for the elementary school students. She is listening to something in Chinese; at the same volume and timbre you’d hear a group of Chinese men talking through a dinner at plastic tables on the streets of Beijing.
I can’t hear myself think, and I’ve been rereading the same four sentences for the past ten minutes. I’ve decided that I might try some coffee on for size to help me through the day. Though this requires entering said “kitchen,” and I’m not sure my auditory senses can handle that. Had I been in my shitty old public school, I’d have had earplugs in my desk drawer; compliments of the Sunshine Committee from a recorder unit I had the displeasure of teaching. The committee accompanied this gift with a sympathy card and some Advil. I had only worked there a short time, and I instantly knew that these were good, solid people.
In my current school, my desk doesn’t even have drawers. I have a huge stack of plastic ones to my right though, and they are plentiful and organized, so I am more than happy with that. If it is a battle between public school and my current private school, I’ll happily take the plastic drawers. Nothing could make me want to go “public” ever again. Not even the comical gestures of a Sunshine Committee.
The herd has begun to enter the lunch area — also the bounds within my music area. It is only the children who have brought home lunches, so I am not facing complete and utter chaos, only complete chaos. Today, they are more chatty than “yelly,” and I am thankful for that.
“My mom won’t even let me have soda. Coke, Dr. Pepper, nothing!” says a second-grader — who also happens to be my son.
“Will your dad let you?” Replies his classmate, Blair.
“Nope. He has fake teeth. When he was a kid, he only drank Dr. Pepper, Pepsi, Sprite, and ate chocolate and sugar, and blah, blah, blah,” he states.
“Oohhh…” all of his classmates sitting around him say singingly.
There’s another conversation at the table next to theirs among first-graders. It’s in Chinese, so I’ve only grasped that they are talking about nighttime, going to bed, and their mom and dad. I’m entertained, as always, by their lunchtime table talks.
Nearby, a fourth-grader sits, attempting to complete her homework for this evening. Two sisters play the board game, “Don’t Say It!” But I’m pretty sure they’ve concocted their own game with the pieces.
A kindergartener sits on the filthy floor and pieces together a puzzle far above her age range — successfully.
Two second-graders and a third-grader read books, while two brothers and another fourth-grader draw sketches from Zelda and bark at the younger brother to leave them alone.
When I was in elementary school, we ate in a giant-sized cafeteria and, without knowing it, competed for the loudest voice in the room. I recognize this now, as an adult, looking back through the lens of, say, a lunch lady (there were only ladies on lunch duty back in the 80’s) or the classroom teacher who had the unfortunate room next to the cafeteria. What was so important that the only way to be sure we were heard was to shout into the ether? I’d believe it if you told me that Betty and Jane, the lunch ladies, had gone deaf, or that their ears had retired into a hearing aid twenty years too early. A thankless job.
One day, I was sitting at a small cafeteria table with only four other students. Lauren, Thomas, Maddie, and Caitlin. While I can’t remember what we were discussing, I do remember laughing so hard I almost fell off the bench. Lauren was practically crying in laughter, too. Were we that funny once upon a time? I’d like to think so. Apparently, we were so outlandishly loud that Betty and Jane had walked to every lunch table and asked them to stop speaking until there was only one table left…ours. They wanted to highlight how obnoxiously strident the voices of only five small and scrawny kids could be. Of course, this only made us and everyone laugh even louder. This is great, I thought.
I suppose that obtuse and trivial cafeteria behavior was made up for by the wit of Maddie and my lunchtime hussle. We were thieves. Little, twirpy, unsuspecting, convenient store stealing, drugstore robbing thieves. One of our more “big-time” Maddie and Heather hussles was stealing loads of Amazing Fruit packages (think gummy bears) and selling them for .50 cents a pop at the lunch table. This enabled us to actually buy some candy at the convenience store while simultaneously stealing even more candy. Clever, right? The perfect cover for our actual shenanigans.
This makes me realize how lucky I am to be in the midst of this crazy and wild herd. I mean, comparatively speaking, I could not have gotten it any easier than I have it. These kids really couldn’t be better. Children, especially in large herds, are annoying by nature. They are loud, dirty, messy, and forgetful. At the end of the day, if I had to pit my past against my present as a teacher responsible for students, I’d happily and quickly pick the latter.
Betty and Jane were saints. Perhaps they’re angels now, for they may have met an early grave after dealing with the lot of us. Since heaven isn’t a place that I believe in, and if these ladies have indeed met their untimely death at our hands, I’d like to think that they’re ghosts. Haunting each and every one of us with shrill screams and smells of rotten food. I’d also like to think that they’ve given me a hall pass for my current job in which I am paying penance daily.
It’s relatively quiet before the children who have consumed the school-provided lunch join us. Then, we’ll gather for five minutes of meditation before departing our separate ways, hoping that today will finally be the day. The day the relaxation from our silent five minutes of music and deep breathing might positively impact the children’s next class. Knowing all the while, I’ll be hoping for the same thing the very next day.
