delicious buttermilk
If you visit any elementary school cafeteria, you can see a unique perspective in childhood gender awareness. The little 1st graders all sit together, seemingly unaware that they are interspersed with both boys and girls. However, if you look at the fifth graders, they are completely separated, girls on one end of the table and boys on the other. When possible, they even leave a cootie barrier of a couple extra seats between the two tribes. The boys still want attention from the girls at this age, but they get it mostly by throwing stuff at them. Then the mixture is reversed again as these kids grow into hormone-crazed teenagers, and they all sit together again, many with hopes of getting all the cooties they can get their hands on.
I was a chubby elementary kid, so Lunch was my favorite part of the day. If you didn’t bring your lunch, you’d wait in these monstrously long lines for the mystery random meat casserole or a big piece of sloppy pizza that appeared to be trying to melt off the side of your compartmentalized tray. One time I asked if I could have a pizza that looks like a triangle instead of the big rectangular thing and the mean cafeteria ladies laughed and laughed.
If you forgot or lost your lunch money, which was a terrifying moment for a shy seven-year-old, they treated you like you had just pooped in line. They made you stand next to the cashier lady in exile while the rest of your class went through, staring at you. Then they’d give you a piece of toast with honey on it. Geez, why not give me some sloppy pizza on credit or something? You’d walk around with your little toast on your tray and the older kids would whisper “Oh look, he’s poor. Give him your hunk of cheese.”
One time I got to the drink selection point of the line and was choosing which milk to get. Usually I got chocolate, but this time I noticed a brand new milk called Buttermilk. Wow, butter?! Butter is great on everything — that sounded delicious! I almost couldn’t wait to get to my seat to drink it. I open that little carton and chugged it, filling my whole mouth with that curdled taste of buttermilk before realizing it was amazingly disgusting. I spit it out under the table, most of it coming out of my nose and onto the legs of nearby classmates.
When I got into middle school, most of the kids ate the cafeteria lunch, which offered all kinds of delicious junk food choices (nachos, pizza, burgers, and so forth). But not me, I always had to bring my lunch. My stepmom would make these great big lunches (because I was a hungry boy) and pack them into brown bags that were far too small. So not only could everybody see my not-one-but-two sandwiches hanging out of the top of my bag and a banana poking out the side, to keep its contents in the bag I had to cradle it like a baby. The soda in the bottom of the bag would condensate through the bag and all the junk would fall out in my locker, so by lunchtime this chunky boy would be carrying a wet, half-destroyed, overflowing paper bag into the lunchroom with both hands. Not very Fonzie on the cool scale.