Plucky Letters to US soldiers in Iraq

Monday, February 28, 2005


Dear Army Guys,

I hope you have a productive and successful field training experience. Please keep ever in mind that your own attitude will have more impact on your chance of success than almost anything else.

I truly believe it’s my attitude that makes me such a fabulous Lunch Lady. No, really, the kids all say I am the “nice” Lunch Lady. (Ann, my friend and co-worker, is the “mean” one.) It’s all a matter of attitude. My attitude is, “Hey, it’s not like this is a real job.” My co-workers fail to see how an attitude like mine works in the best interest of everyone involved. If you ask me, they take this Lunch Lady business far too seriously.

My fellow Lunch Lady, Ann, is a Condiment Nazi. Her attitude is one of absolute portion control. If the meal plan calls for each kid to get two packets of ketchup, then by God that’s all they’re going to get. She literally hovers over the condiments making sure nobody tries to make off with an extra .25 ounce of mayo. She seethes at any child foolish enough to beg for an extra splotch of mustard. She is convinced they are all trying to “get away with something.”

In Ann’s view, the worst crime a kid can commit is to take something from the salad bar and fail to eat every bite. She can spot a food-waster a mile away. When she sees one, she’ll say, “Look at that! Xavius hasn’t taken a single bite out of that apple!” Then she’ll sashay over to Xavius and yell, “Are you going to eat that apple? What? I don’t care if there’s a WHOLE FAMILY of worms in it! You took it; now you’d better eat it!”

I, on the other hand, couldn’t care less how many tiny packages of condiments or shriveled pieces of fruit they waste. “You want another ketchup, kid? Here, take a few home- help your mom put some food on the table.”

Ann always makes a big production about how poorly behaved the kids are in the lunchroom. It drives her insane that nobody expects them to behave like civilized future restaurant goers. The school principal is new to the job. Initially, she tried to establish some semblance of order by installing a stoplight in the lunchroom. When the noise level is merely deafening, the green light is on. It turns to yellow when the noise level reaches a head-blasting roar. When blood begins to trickle from your ears, the red light comes on and is accompanied by a shrieking siren.

Amazingly, the gadget actually worked for awhile. The shrieking sound was enough to stun even the hardened criminals in fourth grade, at least momentarily. For a few golden weeks, during which no kindergarteners threw up due to nervous exhaustion, there was relative peace. (We still couldn’t have heard the fire alarm, but hey, let’s not ask for miracles, shall we?)

What happened next should have been easy to predict.

The parents began complaining that poor little Da’quan and Mercedes weren’t enjoying the “social hour” provided by lunchtime conversation with their little friends.
Oh, spare me.
If these parents’ idea of “socialization” means head-butting your neighbor while loudly bellowing and squirting chocolate milk out your nose, these kids are getting “socialized” plenty. Nonetheless, our gutless principal, tossing all principles aside, immediately caved in and disarmed the stoplight and unleashed all manner of hell and violence into the lunchroom yet again. The new rules seem to be that there are no rules. Its become an all-out cafeteria free-for-all, no holds barred. I'm surprised the neighbors haven't called the police yet.

Ann was crushed when the stoplight plug was pulled. She felt the need to protest this miscarriage of lunchroom justice. Since Ethel wouldn’t let her file a grievance with OSHA, she did the next best thing and began wearing a conspicuous pair of bright yellow earplugs in the lunchroom. She bought me a pair, too, but I couldn’t get into it. I look plenty dorky enough in my Lunch Lady apron. Parading around with a pair of neon yellow marshmallows stuffed in my ears does nothing to enhance my Lunch Lady allure. My chosen course of action is to drag one of the lunch supervisors out into the hall and scream, “Can’t you DO something about this?” I know they can’t, but at least I can tell Ann I made an effort.


The best part of my job is that I get to muck with the malleable young minds of the students. I lie to them all the time. Sometimes my lies are intended to get them to eat things they don’t want to eat, but mostly I just like to mess with their heads.

The food-related lies come quite naturally to me, since I’ve been lying to my son Dylan about food for years. He’s a picky eater, so I spent the first seven years of his life convincing him that everything I served was made of Pop-Tarts. I’d slap a meatloaf on the table and breezily remark that I’d found this great new recipe on the back of the Pop-Tart box.

If we’re serving something unpopular at school, I just tell the kids it’s from McDonalds. It works pretty well on the little ones, but I have to put forth more effort with the upper grades. Every now and then we are lucky enough to get to test a new item for the district. Once, when Ethel scorched-earthed a batch of nasty-looking chalupas, I told the kids the oven had broken down and so we’d had to bring in Taco Bell.
“But, but, but, that’s not a taco…” some big-mouthed kid began to protest.
“New item,” I quipped, “The manager said we’re the very first customers who ordered it, and YOU might get to be in the commercial.”
No enterprising fourth grader is going to risk blowing a potential TV career just to avoid eating a smoldering chalupa.

Sometimes I tell them it’s “National Eat What You’re Given Day.” This worked really well right after the tsunami. In a hushed tone I explained that every fish stick eaten that day “could save a tsunami victim’s life.” This had no effect on the little kids, but the older ones solemnly took their trays and dutifully choked down their rock-hard breaded perch twigs.

I am so good at telling these outrageous fibs, I can even get kids to eat things they’ve never seen before. That is no small triumph, especially with the free lunch kids. Once we served oven fried chicken for a PTO Restaurant Day special. Several kids complained that there were “sticks” (bones) in their chicken. They had never eaten an actual piece of chicken in their pathetic little lives! All they’d ever had were nuggets, patties, strips and whatever other shapes of compacted chicken meat we serve at school. (Lord only knows what they eat at home, but I suspect it’s mostly frozen pizza and generic Cheetos.)

My Lunch Lady claim to fame is that I can get these kids to eat something scary and unknown just by changing the name of it. Some of our kids would tell you they’ve never heard of salsa, but they eat it every-other Thursday. (I told them its Mexican ketchup.) They happily dip their breaded cheese sticks into marinara sauce, even though they’ve never heard of that, either. (Italian ketchup) When they balked at tomato soup, I told them it was Franco-American Spaghetti-Os without the Os.
(That one was so lame even I was surprised they fell for it.)

Sometimes I just make stuff up for the fun of it. My job is not exactly intellectually challenging. I find that concocting outrageous tales with which to bamboozle small children helps pass the time. A few weeks ago we were serving Rotini pasta. I told the first graders they’d better eat it because it had taken me hours and hours to twist each noodle into that corkscrew shape. Wide-eyed, they said, “Really? You have to do that?” It was such a hit I tried it again on the second grade. Some smarty-pants wanted to know why I went to all that trouble when we could have just left the noodles flat. “Because,” I replied, “this way we can fit twice as much pasta into each pan.”

My boss,Ethel, loves it when I pull these stunts with the kids. I’m practically her only source of entertainment these days. She especially enjoys it when I psych them into asking for things they don’t want. If we’re not moving the tuna salad sandwiches, I might remark to a kid asking for PBJ that, “It’s a good thing you don’t want tuna! It’s so EXPENSIVE!” The next five kids in line will demand tuna sandwiches just because they want to eat like the rich and famous. Ethel will laugh so hard her teeth nearly fly from her jaws at a modest stunt like that.

Ann fails to share our glee. She’s a regular laugh-riot when it comes to other things, but about the kids she’s grimly serious. To her, lunch time is nothing short of war. The kids are the enemy, and the cafeteria is the battlefield. Once that lunch bell rings, she is locked and loaded, ready to take someone out at the first hint of a condiment heist. Every now and then she catches me giving someone an extra serving of diced peaches or an unauthorized slice of stale bread. Then she trots out the old "give 'em an inch and they'll eat you out of house and industrial kitchen" lecture. Its true, and ultimately she's probably right.
But who cares? Its not like this is a real job.


Be good, work hard, eat your veggies, and for cripes sake, don’t take more than your fair share of ketchup in the mess hall!

Much Love,

--An Army Mom