In elementary school, we ate lunch in the beige school cafeteria grouped by grade.
First, second, and third graders ate together during one lunch period, and then fourth, fifth, and sixth graders ate together the following period. In hindsight, I see that keeping the potty-mouthed hormonal sixth graders away from the innocent-as-baby lambs first graders was a magnificent strategy.
You could smell the cafeteria before you saw it; that murky, steaming hot water the galvanized tins of food sat in in order to stay warm, the perfumed sweat of the lunch ladies and the tang of the lemony floor wax, applied in thin layers nightly so that when we spilled, it beaded up and stayed in one place until Mr. Ovitt was dispatched to come mop it up.
Responsible sixth graders were chosen to sit at the tops of the long cafeteria tables and maintain order. During my fourth-grade year, the sixth grader who sat in this regal position at my table made everyone in her orbit exceedingly uncomfortable, but this was during a time when children just took their lumps and didn't squeal on one another. This was my childhood; and we all have stories like what I'm about to tell you.
I was (and still am) a talker and I used to dawdle to lunch, yapping nonstop with my friends, my teachers, and the lunch aide, Mrs. Herlihy, who stood paramount over us with her clipboard, strolling around the cafeteria keeping watch. By the time I made it to my table each day, the only seat available was next to the top banana sixth grader, to whom I will refer as "The Wasp". I would, for the sake of this piece, call her "The Queen Bee", due to her top of the table stature, but that would be an insult to the fluffy, gentle pollinators.
Wasps will sting unprovoked and so did she. When I opened my carton of milk, unwrapped my sandwich or brought out my fat little blue and white fruit thermos each day, she'd peer over, uninvited, with her probiscis and ask me with hardened, dark eyes if my mother hated me. Swallowing anxiously, I'd eat in uncharacteristic silence for a chatty kid, and just stare at the pictures on my Krofft Superstar lunchbox. When she got no reaction from me, she'd move down the line, prodding and criticizing other lunches, haircuts, sneakers, intellectual capacities; whatever she deemed as fair game for her nasty brand of perpetual insults.
One day I brought my favorite sandwich, cream cheese and olives on rye bread. At home, my mom and I used to eat it together on the weekends, but I rarely got it in my lunchbox, for it took some extra preparation and Mom usually packed extra grainy "Branola" bread in my lunches during the week.
Unpeeling the waxed paper, I saw that it was a half sandwich. I expected this, as Mom had just told me I needed to lose some weight. I remember distinctly that I weighed 54 pounds and for a fourth grader, that was a little too much. I hadn't had a growth spurt where height was concerned and my older cousin Christopher's hand me down Toughskins were too tight in the thighs and rear, so, half sandwich it was.
Well, The Wasp noticed immediately that I had half of my usual sandwich and started chiding me.
"What's with the half sandwich? Are you poor?"
"Are your parents starving you?"
"What is that anyway? Cream cheese and what? Ick, so gross!"
And she proceeded to crow to everyone at our table to take a gander at the disgusting food I was eating. I remember leaning into my lunch, shielding it from the prying eyes of my tablemates. Then, I sat up straight and said directly to The Wasp,
"I know. Gross. I don't really like it, but I'll eat it."
And that was my first betrayal of my family, my heritage, my home life, for the sake of being a cool kid. A kid who conformed to societal expectations about lunch. A kid who didn't eat cream cheese and olives.
The Wasp couldn't have been happier to see me squirm and bend to her way of seeing the world. From that day forward, she spent less time picking on me and more time focusing on other weak and quiet children in her midst. She verbally speared them, mocking their lunches brought from home. I remember insincerely chuckling quietly alongside her, knowing I was wrong, watching her ebony eyes narrow and her skinny fingers point at someone's gelatinous ham sandwich or off-brand store-bought dessert. What I felt most was an overwhelming sense of relief that it wasn't me in her crosshairs, underscored by a filthy soul-crushing grime of having sold out for this safety.
Contemplating this scene 45 years later, I cannot recall what The Wasp ever ate. I don't remember her having a lunchbox (and I remember my classmates' Snoopy, Bionic Woman and Herbie the Love Bug lunch boxes with absolute clarity) so it's possible that she bought a hot lunch via the lunch line every day. Her parents, who owned a newer built, beautiful split-level home, certainly could have afforded to buy school-prepared lunches every day and her mom didn't appear to be the Betty Crocker homemaker type, so maybe that was why The Wasp felt the need to be so nosy about what others were bringing in, and why she felt so entitled to heckle us. Maybe her Mom didn't have time, or want to make time, to thoughtfully pack a Superstar Barbie lunch box with a salami sandwich and a small pink note wishing her good luck on field day.
The Wasp is still around and she is still deriding others. I see her posts on Facebook because she is friends with a few of my friends and she still points out what everyone is doing that falls below her prickly standards. She is still publicly snickering at people's choices. She is still sticking her stinger where it doesn't belong.
I steer clear, though I would love to someday drive by her house, cream cheese and olive sandwich held aloft through my sunroof and tell her to fuck off.
My mother loved me.
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