writing: it's what's for lunch

My friend Elizabeth, whom I know from my writing group in DC, posted something today about how her blog is supposed to be a writing blog but more often winds up being about other things. I feel the same way, except about my life rather than my blog.

But let's forgo the boring introspection, shall we, and get right to her fun writing prompt? "Tell me about a school lunch you had once. ... Don't forget the details. Write for fifteen minutes."

OK, go.

Third or fourth grade, R*hrerst*wn Elementary, L*nc*ster, PA. The cafeteria is blue, with those tables that pull down from the wall. Round red stools are attached to the tables, and they magically spring to life as the tables become horizontal. When not serving as a cafeteria, the room is for assemblies, with a stage up front and a big American flag hanging on one wall. During assemblies, the little kids sit on the floor in the front, Indian-style, and chairs are set up in rows for the older kids in the back. (In my memory, the teachers stood at the ends of their classes' aisles for the entire assembly; could that possibly be true?) Also during assemblies, the kitchen part of the room where the food is served is shuttered up, clean and silent.

It's spaghetti day, a popular event, and the line snakes out the door. I don't remember waiting, exactly, or what else was on my tray, or giving my lunch ticket or money or whatever to the women who sat at the folding table with the cash registers at the end of the line. But I do remember taking the orange-ish red tray and walking to the condiment table set up in the middle of the room and putting spoonful after spoonful of cheese on my spaghetti. We didn't eat cheese on spaghetti in my house -- maybe it was a kosher thing -- and it was a thrilling concept. It's really good cheese, too: Not the powdery grated unidentifiable stuff, but big shreds, the kind you'd make with a medium-soft cheese on the largest holes of a box grater. Did some fairy-godmother lunch lady decide that a bunch of eight-year-olds needed freshly grated mozzarella?

Anyway, I heap my spaghetti with cheese, pick up my tray, and almost run into my principal, Mr. G**dman, a sweet man who lived up to his name.

"Hey, you gonna have some spaghetti with your cheese?"

I felt a mixture of amusement ("that was funny!") and shame ("he's making fun of how much cheese I took!") and specialness ("he talked to me!"). The memory ends there, but I so remember his face as he said it, his gray suit and red tie and white shirt, his longish black hair and his nice smile.

And that, my friends, is my most memorable school lunch. Tell me about one of yours? Thanks, Elizabeth, for making writing a little part of my evening.