The Cafeteria Ladies Have Ways of Making You Pay
Miss C came home from school yesterday with a message stamped on her forearm in black ink.
I noticed it immediately because I am very observant as soon as I’d turned the TV on for Miss C and fixed myself lunch and talked on the phone to my mom.
The stamp says, “Buy Lunch Tickets.”
What the hell…I mean heck…I mean huh?
I asked Miss C what the stamp meant, all the while visions of some net-haired cafeteria lady shamefully waving Miss C’s arm in the air and shouting “THE LITTLE BLONDE GIRL HAS NO MILK MONEY!” danced in my head.
Miss C looked at me as if that was the silliest question ever, because of course, duh, mommy you should know these things. Obviously she is not scarred for life because I forgot to send milk money two days in a row but I felt bad. Especially when she said, “Mommy you’re all the time forgetting to send my money for the cafeteria!” in exaggerated disgust and went back to eating her afternoon snack and watching TV. (See, obviously traumatized.)
I called her teacher to confirm that the kids were going to the cafeteria this week. I just assumed they wouldn’t because schools here are open only half-days this week due to the hellacious weather. My knowledgeable neighbor who has a first grader didn’t know either. I went to a country elementary school so small we ate lunch at our desks and listened to vinyl albums like the GREASE soundtrack for entertainment, so brunch is a foreign concept to me. This is my “when I was a kid I walked 10 miles to school in the snow” story.
I’ll admit to you all that I am a perfectionist, although lately you’d never know it from looking at my house or car (I do put up a good front at the office where my desk is neat and organized). I lovingly packed Miss C’s lunch in her purple Disney Princess lunch box last week during her first full week of kindergarten. I’ve already sent in a check for Weekly Reader and signed up to volunteer for the fall book fair and helped her teacher with a workbook project. Sometimes I am one of those organized mommies. However, I also wear mismatched shoes in public and kill plants and injure myself shopping at WalMart and assume there is no such thing as school brunch.
