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| Please, Sir, could I have some...less?
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"This reminds me of lunch back in school," says the young, vapid idiot sitting next to me here on the end. Said young, vapid idiot is a female, of what I call the 'like' variety. You know. The variety that must insert the phrase 'like' in between seemingly every other word of their daily conversations. "I like, have to go into my walk-in closet, and like, have to find something to wear tonight, I like, soooo don't have any new clothes." Of course, the male counterpart of this species would be the variety that begins every exclamatory sentence with "Dude!" At my job, I'm surrounded by these cretins, age providing no relief from this insidious "Dude!" culture; grown up men in their thirties, walking around, yapping in teen tongue, reciting whole swatches of dialogue from 'American Pie', or, for that matter, any juvenile, stultifying effort starring Will Ferrell. Of course, I should count my blessings. I could still be back at my old job, where I'd be sitting around a profoundly brain-necrotic culture, surrounded by talk of...oh my God...professional wrestling! I shudder uncontrollably.
"Ohmygoddd! This is like so...gross!"
"Yeah, like school," I say aloud. Jesus, all it is is linguine and frickin' meatballs. The girl looks kind of like Avril Lavigne, which figures, of course. A paragon for all American womanhood to strive for.
"Yeah!" The girl looks at me, like I've uttered an epiphany. "Like school! Did you go to school?"
Jesus H. Christ. "Uh, yeah. A little simpler back in Lincoln's day, but pretty much the same idea." My attempt at making a small joke. Of course, it confounds her, but it was a nice try, anyway.
"I mean, there aren't any quesadillas on the menu, like, what up with that?"
Indeed. Seems that nowadays, nine out of ten teenaged girls have either A) a blank, stupid look on their faces, much like Anne Hathaway in the ads for those inane 'Princess' films she made with Julie Andrews, or B) a well honed bitchy look, firmly in place for having to deal with overly attentive, young, vapid males who constantly utter exclamatory sentences beginning with "Dude!" It's hard growing up in America.
School lunches. Wow. You know what? Here's hot lunch in a typical Elementary School in the Borough of Queens, back in the days of one John Vliet Lindsay: 1) a sandwich, on white bread, of what appeared to be a slice of boiled ham, in pastel pink, with the texture of the chamois you used to dry your car after washing it. I personally think it was really made of chamois; it did its level best to induce a gag reflex, and kept me away from boiled ham for many years afterwards. The white bread was smeared with bright yellow mustard. 2) you'd also get a bowl of soup. Quite often it was labeled 'pea soup'. The very dark olive color suggested that it was harvested from the East River just off College Point, and it surely smelled like it. I stayed away from any kind of pea soup until only very recently. Having been exposed now to the real thing, I've become quite the enthusiast. 3) a serving of ice cream, rolled up into a folded piece of cardboard, and 4), the ever memorable half pint container of milk, in the green and white livery of O'Neill Dairies. All this for a grand total of thirty-five cents.
Part of the deal was being served by the school's food service employees. The only thing separating them from appearing like the crones surrounding the cauldron in 'Macbeth' was the fact that each of them were a few hundred pounds too heavy. They were surly, and miserable. One day, in line, one of the kids in front of me made a face when he was given the pink shammy sandwich. "What's the matter?" the food service employee asked, in a thick brogue. "Ya can't eat ham, ya little Jew bastard? You'll eat it and like it!"
The seventeen-year-old paramecium mind next to me is still complaining, now on her cellphone, to a friend, who no doubt looks like her, and has the same vacant look in her eye. I'm trying hard not to listen to the conversation, which has the word 'like' interspersed between every other word. You see, I know what they serve in the schools around here. Trust me, school children in Mexico go to bed at night, dreaming of school meals like these kids get.
"How you doing?" Dawn asks.
"Oh, I'm fine."
"No, you're not. I can tell."
"Well..."
"I know. This is what happens when you let TV raise your kids," she whispers.
"What frightens me to no end, is how Carolyn would be perfectly happy with some thing...like this."
"Well, her parents are happy, I suppose." Dawn makes herself a cup of coffee. She's into healthy helpings of creme and sugar. "I'm leaving soon. Cookie just arrived."
"Okay."
"What am I supposed to bring, anyway?"
"Ice."
"What's Vickie bringing?"
'Ice cream."
"Good. She gets to spend more."
I smile. "God, you're petty!"
Dawn smiles. "Yeah, I guess.."
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Posted by Knoxxie03 on 2008-05-24 10:19:55 | Rating: | Views: 57
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Pea soup? Ewwwww. That's even worse than the cardboard pizza we got in my day...
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Posted by crydun2004
on 2008-05-24 18:40:06
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In those days, pizza would've been considered an outlandish item to include on a school lunch menu. Sandwich, soup, ice cream, milk...and a coffee mug to run along the bars of your cell when you want to get the guard's attention :( ...
Oh, yeah. Right. Not much of a stretch to think we got more than our share of what they were serving on Riker's...
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Posted by Knoxxie03
on 2008-05-24 21:27:25
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My school didn't have a cafeteria. You had to bring your own lunch or go offsite to buy it somewhere. Of course that was a private school not a public.. not sure if public schools have cafeterias anymore either.. hmmmm
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Posted by hairytoad2005
on 2008-05-25 05:29:39
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