Too Fabulous for Words

An Ode to Cafeterias

When I first moved to Canada, I was shocked about three things: 1) mail gets delivered on foot 2) the price of cheese (Seriously, what is UP with that?) and 3) the schools didn't have cafeterias.

WHAT? You mean I have to make a lunch each day? But that takes too much time! Where will I find the time to watch the poolboy and eat bon bons whilst wearing nothing but diamonds and a few strategically placed feathers?

Growing up, Sundays were a day of promise and hope. I would open the newspaper eagerly to find the school lunch schedule for the week. Spaghetti-os on Monday? Awesome! Chicken nuggets on Wednesday? Whoo-hoo! Fishsticks Friday? Uh-oh, I feel a sick day coming on.

Looking back, the school lunches weren't particularily good or even (gasp!) nutritious, but I remember the rush of excitement when the bell rang and we all ran to get in line. Food, glorious food! We got to pick our own little trays and choose white or chocolate milk. The power we held!

Of course now that I'm old and withered, I can't remember a single meaningful conversation I had with my friends over our plates of pears floating in Jell-o, or if I even liked the mystery casserole (tasty!), but I do remember one day in particular.

I was in the fifth grade when my mom got the brilliant idea that I should get a head gear. She and my evil dentist decided that my front teeth were a wee bit bucked and this was due to my tongue pressing on front teeth. (WTF?) So the dentist installed a tortuous device in the roof of my mouth that had three little barbs that prevented me from letting my tongue touch my front teeth. What it actually did was stab my tongue ove and over because I couldn't very well keep my tongue curled up all the time, could I? I remember sitting at a long table in the caf surrounded by my friends trying to eat soggy french fries while my poor swollen tongue got stabbed repeatedly. Big fat tears rolled down my face and some nameless teacher patted my back ineffectually. It was probably the worst day in my little life and probably the only thing I remember the most about elementary school besides my insane desire to ace every one of my spelling tests, because I was a nerd like that.

Each day, as I slave over making my kids a nutritrious lunch (Cheetos! Lunchables! Yogurt Tubes!), I think wistfully of the cafeteria, an institution that gave my mom the extra time each day for her to put an extra ice cube in her gin and spray an extra layer of Aqua-net on her feathered bangs. The lucky bitch.

Check out School Menu and its parental counterpart Family Everyday, two sites that work together with School Food Services Directors to provide and promote healthy eating and physical fitness for kids and their parents. I found I was insanely jealous going to these sites! Oh, to live in the land of cafeterias!

Sadly, It's All True

When I was a junior in high school, I had Mrs. Mitchell for AP English. EVERYONE wanted to be in her class, not for her fabulous teaching skillz or for her entertaining and easy exams. No, people wanted to be in her class because she was, oh, how can I say it? How about, easily distracted.

Mrs. M. was about 50 and apparently went to The Tammy Faye Baker School of Cosmetolgy. She was a tiny woman, but LORDY did she like her make-up. It must have added 10lbs. to her face. And then there was her perfume. (cough) And her stories about Mr. Mitchell who liked to play in the garage with his nuts. (hmmm) Besides rambling about her husband and grown kids, she'd also regale us about how ineffectual her garbagemen where, why she thought that her car needed a new muffler and what she thought of the principal's fake hair. To say that she was easy to side-track was like saying that teenagers have flawless skin. She'd start the class off okay, but all one of us had to do was raise our hand and ask her a question, like, "Can I go get some water?" and she'd start droning on about how the water restrictions in Reno were turning her damn lawn brown. Those selfish beaurocrats!

In fact, Mrs. M. would talk about anything except for English, which was unfortunate for the nerds in our class (me). That year we read the most depressing book about a teenager with a tumor. A fatal one. In his brain. Written from the point of view of the TUMOR. Yeah, that's right. And it was called something really brilliant, like Jimmy's Tumor. So we'd be sent home each day to read this drivel which was determined to make us all consider suicide, because We Too, Could Die at Any Moment! We'd then arrive in class the next day and she'd ask us to get out our books because we were going to discuss how in Chapter 3, Bobby discovers that his tumor? It's staying for Thanksgiving, so pull up an extra chair.

But then some moron would ask Mrs. M. what she had for dinner last night and she'd launch into detailed description of Mr. M.'s awesome BBQ skills and I'd be almost quivering with rage and disgust because WHAT ABOUT TOMMY AND HIS TUMOR? TOMMY CAN'T SEE ANYMORE, BUT MR. M SURE CAN MAKE A TASTY RIB-EYE.

The next year I had a new teacher whose name I can not remember because, dude, class was at eight fucking a.m. and who is awake at that hour, really? That year we studied the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, which is just, oh, snooze. This nameless teacher was really, really into Hobbitland and all that stuff, so much so that she would come to class in costume and then ask us to come to the front of the class and recreate the scene where Gandalf and Frodo did something creepy. The whole year I sat in class and prayed. Prayed to anyone who'd listen for the teacher to NOT call my name and make me wear the horrid shedding wool cape and pretend I'm only 3'9" tall.

When I went to college, I thought, "Finally! Teachers who will actually teach something!" Until I walked into English 101 and discovered a boy-child prof who wore loosely knotted ties a-la Brenda Walsh and sometimes prefaced his lectures with "Dudes, listen up." I received back an essay from him where he'd circled the word angst and put a giant question mark next to it and wrote in red pen, Spellcheck! To which I wrote next to it, Get a Dictionary! and then a smiley face and threw it back into his inbox. ASSHOLE.

Speaking of 90210, how fab is this? If only my husband hadn't taken away my VISA, I'd totally buy it and spray it all over my bangs and surly attitude and pray that the smell would bring Brandon to my front door so we could drive off in his sweet Mustang convertible.