Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Lunchroom Adventures

I wear lots of "hats" these days.  Today I wore my lunch-lady hat as I volunteered in the cafeteria at Will's school.  My job mainly consists of opening Gogurt packages and answering the question, "Whose mom are you?"  Today there was some extra excitement as apparently the "special" of the day did not sit well with one of our patrons.  That didn't seem to stop him as he lost his lunch and then proceeded to line up with his class.  The kids at the closest table (which happened to be Will's) raised their hands and told us what happened.   The official lunch lady (she has a whistle) asked, "Who did this?"  Will and his friends yelled, "It was the guy in the camo pants!"  She quickly found the culprit and whisked him away.  Meanwhile I was left to deal with a table full of 10 year old boys and a puddle of used lunch.  The custodian saved the day and sprinkled a magic substance on the puddle which changed the aroma from super-sour to super-sweet.  Soon all the kids were sitting with their shirts pulled up over their noses.  The rest of my shift was spent directing traffic around the freshly mopped floor.  It was like the scene in Bugs Life when a leaf falls in the path of the ants and they have to be re-routed.
(Did you notice I told that whole story without using the words "vomit" or "throw up"?  I didn't want to make anyone sick.)

2 comments:

Liz said...

I was wondering how many other terms you could come up with without using vomit, barf, throw up, puke, etc. :)

Kelly said...

I did cafeteria duty today too. That's really nice of you to go up through 10 year olds. At my kids' school, we cover just kinder and 1st.

Anyway, a girl got me and showed me her lunch in the trash. I retrieved the container and checked her lunchbox - she had no other food. I thought she said it was an accident but I could not imagine how her container and lunch ended up so close to the trash that it fell in. I asked her teacher whether she had any money on her lunch account. It turns out that she is not allowed to eat meat so she had limited options. And the teacher gleaned that she threw it in on purpose. Whatever. I guess she learned a little about a seven hour school day and hunger.

Also I have been joking that I am going to contact Borden Milk to see if they will staff our cafeteria duty. The milk bottles are very hard for young kids to open without spilling. Parent volunteers open dozens per day. And if the tab breaks off, allow another 3 minutes for an adult to open. Today my very own son spilled about half his milk all over his clothes and cried when he tried to open his. Yeah thanks Borden.