Love Letter To A Lunch Lady, One Year Later
I haven’t been happier that we pulled our son from the hippie nut ban! school. Okay, so I was happier the one time I realized that marshmallows did really weird things when they were microwaved, but I’m pretty sure that I was wasted at the time.
I was unsure of our motives, because, quite frankly, Dave and I stuck out like a pair of brightly colored, mismatched, rain-forest-chopping-down, as-far-from-eco-friendly-as-one-can-be-without-driving-Hummers thumbs. Now, it’s not as though we don’t recycle or love Mother Earth, because we do, and if you’ve been around for any length of time, you know that I garden like I drink diet Coke (read: obsessively).
But, according to the other parents, it just wasn’t enough. Because if we shopped at Trader Joe’s, they shopped at Whole Foods. If we shopped at Whole Foods, they organically grew their own fruits and vegetables. While I am not a competitive person by nature, the other parents seemed to feel absolute moral superiority towards us both and quite frankly, it got old after 4 years.
Adding fuel to the fire was the poor communication between the school and the parents. Like this charmer of an example. What Dave was told was that our son “ran into a fence and got a little banged up.”
What I got was this:
This picture does not do justice to how beaten my child looked. It took ALL MY WILLPOWER not to comment on it, because with Ben, if you comment on something like a paper cut, suddenly he will expect sympathy cards and ice packs. And this? DESERVED SYMPATHY CARDS AND ICE PACKS.
So I admit that I was slightly annoyed by the downplaying of his injuries, mainly because I had to rely on acting skills *I* had never honed to not shriek when I saw him. I was also several weeks postpartum at the time, so the hormones may not have helped.
The nail in the proverbial coffin was the aw-shucks sort of after-thought type letter sent home right before school was set to begin for Ben, though, at the hippie nut ban! school. Because the school was so small, you see, we had to pack lunches for our children.
Maybe for other families, this was like the heavens opening up and shining down upon them, bento boxes neatly packed with nutritious choices like edamame and perfectly cut carrot coins, sandwiched between homemade whole grain crackers and cheese made from the milk of Buddhist cows.
There were, of course, lots of restrictions about what we could and could not pack. No refined sugars. No juice boxes. No chips. No candy. No cookies. No soda. Nothing that needed to be microwaved or prepared. Reusable containers. No brown paper bags.
In theory, none of this should have been an issue.
In theory.
But my darling son, Benjamin, is autistic. With food issues.
(the one time I’d dared pack a granola bar with tiny chips of chocolate in it–and I do mean TINY–he was singled out in front of the entire class and made an “example” for daring to bring “candy” to school. He was mortified. And six years old. It was my fault and I haven’t stopped feeling bad about it since)
For an entire year, I tried all kinds of combinations of foods, and about 95% of the time, he’d come home with a full lunch bag, his lunch untouched. Certainly, while he was not starving to death, this troubled me.
Food issues were nothing new, but this particular medium–lunch food with millions of restrictions–was, and I was at a loss. The only, and I do mean the ONLY thing I could safely get him to eat was a peanut butter sandwich.
So the day that the leaflet arrived informing us that we could no longer pack anything with nuts, or nut oils, in our son’s lunch, The Daver and I looked at each other and (in uncharacteristic unison) said, “oh FUCK.”
We couldn’t get an answer as to what specifically this meant, and after repeated calls to the school, it was *shrugs shoulders* “you know, nut stuff.” If I’d been that parent, I wouldn’t have been so comforted by that answer, because it was clear the school didn’t understand nut allergies. As a nurse I did.
Icing on the cake. Not the nut ban, but the way it was handled. I would have been scared shitless if that were my kid (turned out it was actually the SIBLING of a student) and frankly, I’d just had enough of their bullshit.
So that was that, we plucked him out and plunked him into the public school system.
You know what they have there? They have an office staff. They have policies. And best of all?
THEY HAVE LUNCH LADIES.
*cue angels singing on high*
And with lunch ladies (*hums the lunch lady song*) comes lunch. HOT lunch. Lunch with choices! Glorious, glorious choices! Every single day *I* am not responsible for providing food for my son! If he doesn’t eat? I am none the wiser.
I no longer have to sadly throw out the old, pathetic, stale and untouched sandwich each night. I don’t have to throw out uneaten shriveled carrots, looking remarkably like flaccid penises (penii?), wondering how my child will gain weight. Nor do I have to flip coins or play rock, paper, scissors with The Daver to determine who is unlucky enough to have to try and make Ben a lunch he’ll never eat THIS time.
No.
It is with great pleasure, pomp and circumstance that I write out a check every month to the lunch ladies, signing my name with an extra dose of pizazz because I am just that mother-fucking happy to be letting someone else cook for my child. I would TIP the lunch lady if I could, I love her so much. I might even bear her children, if she asked me.
And if, for some reason, I had to pack my son a lunch, I could EASILY pack him, like Dave and I were always tempted to do while Ben was at the hippie nut ban! school: a 5 pound bag of white sugar and a can of Mountain Dew. I don’t think ANYONE would say anything.
God BLESS the public school system.
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Still working my nards off on my new group blog that you’re going to love, but in the meantime, if you want to get your group blog mojo working, I could use some help with Mushroom Printing, y’all. Turns out everyone wants to hide the site because they don’t want anyone knowing they write there. Which is HILARIOUS to me.
Also, there’s a Mushroom Print Twitter account.
Also, do I only publish one post there per day? I can’t decide if more than that is going to overwhelm the feed reader people.
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I’m talking about the time I accidentally bought a whole stash of Granny Panties over at Toy With Me today. I’m always taking ideas for my column over there, so if you have any, HOLLER.
OMFG I love your post… can’t wait to dive in and read more…
Bless your heart for being so god damn frank.
Sounds like a bloody nightmare. How the he’ll were you meant to ensure he had a balanced diet consisting of all the major food groups (cake, pie, chocolate and ice cream)?
Call me crazy, but lunch is one of the reasons I consider public school a strong possibility in my children’s future and I am one of those crazy hippy types you are talking about. Hey, when they got it going, they got it. How you gonna argue with that??
Dude. Exactly. I like edamame and tofu. My kid pukes when he eats it. Public school knows what’s up.
Dude, got any good edamame recipes? I’ve just discovered that stuff (not like, as an Iowan, I don’t live in a whole state full of soybeans or anything…)
I’m an Iowan, but like my edamame the plain old lightly salted way. Bo-o-o-o-oring…
That’s exactly how I eat it. Occasionally, I get crazy and sprinkle some lemon on it. CRAZY.
Hurray for lunch ladies! And not worrying about lunch…
I hear you. And feel your relief. I so wish you’d tried out the bag o’ sugar and a Mountain Dew idea before Ben left, but then again, if they made an example of him for a frigging granola bar (because negative reinforcement always works), I would have hated to have taken the chance they’d roll out the rack. Or that fence. Grandma was right about that “it could put your eye out” crap, huh? So glad you made the switch.
That poor kid. That POOR kid. He was SO embarrassed and I felt SO badly. They were SO mean and it was MY FUCKING FAULT not his. Why couldn’t they have told ME!?!
An honest mistake is hardly your FAULT. And the fuckers should have been smacked for humiliating an AUTISTIC KID in front of his classmates. That’s disgusting.
Yeah, right? Like he was a fucking PUPPY. He was 6 and it was my fucking fault. I’m still fucking pissed.
I’ve got the exact opposite problem – my son has a weird food thing (he has been seeing an occupational therapist for)which makes him NOT eat anything that the school prepares. He goes to a private school but I have to PACK every.freakin.lovin.day. Which, if you can’t tell, drives me BSC. I SO wish the kid would just let me throw money at the problem and make out with the lunch ladies on the side. But alas, I pack a damn peanut butter sandwich EVERY SINGLE DAY. That is, until they ban them. And then? Well. We’ll revolt.
PS. The bottom of that post, to me, read: Tiffany isn’t doing shit. I’m busy as hell. Get your shit together you lazy piece of flesh. hugs and kisses, Becky.
you actually left your poor defenseless boy in that freakin’ school for 4 years???
and? have you heard the lunch lady song from “fame”?
totally fuckin’ awesome!
I’m STILL furious that I left him there for so long. I want to go back and slap myself.
My kids LOVE the lunch lady! I LOVE the lunch lady! I’m too lazy to get my ass up a half an hour early to make organic, nut-free lunches, so I make a deposit in their lunch account each week! You know what’s cooler? BREAKFAST at school! I KNOW! My kids ride their bikes to school 15 minutes early so they can get breakfast too! It is the ultimate for lazy parents like me. I’m waiting for dinner at school. . .
Monkey goes to public school where they have lunch ladies (woo!). The only thing that bothers me about this is that IF we send him with a lunch (he is picky and won’t even some of the things offered) then it has to be healthy. They will actually call you to come get your kid if they see him/her with candy in their lunch bag! But the stuff they serve there? Not healthy at all. They give the kids honeybuns and HI-C for breakfast. And processed foods for lunch. Which, in and of itself, doesn’t bother me all that much but the hypocrisy (THEY can give my kids total crap to eat but I can’t) does.
i am childless and have been out of school for, oh, 13 years now. but i went to a small private school where we had lunch ladies and all types of delicious offerings daily. i can’t believe that a public school would restrict what lunch you have to pack. who determines this level of health? and if they’re going to do that, they should hold the lunch ladies to the same standard. i feel for you, jenn.
also, honeybuns and hi-c sound horrible for breakfast. everyone knows you MUST have diet coke with honeybuns.
I would DIE. I hate making lunch, period. Ever. As in, I’m pretty sure my kids just snacked all summer long, because I hate making lunch.
I have 4….excuse me…..FOUR boys who each like completely different things. I was always that before-motherhood idiot that proclaimed “MY CHILDREN WILL NEVER EAT PUBLIC SCHOOL LUNCHES AND NEVER EVER RIDE THE BUS” [turns nose in the air]. Then after about the 3rd child I looked at the kitchen counter covered in lunch materials (for them AND me, since I was working) and I said “ya know what….fuck. this.”. From that day forward it was hello school lunch and my life has gotten 5 fucktons easier. AND since they beg to ride the bus they now ride to and fro. Now if I could just magically become independently wealthy I’d be SET!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I so remember being all misty-eyed, “MY KID WILL HAVE A HEALTHY LUNCH,” too.
Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!
I laugh because my kids are the same way.
What crap! I’m glad you got him outta that school. My kid takes her lunch to school only because they cost $4/day and she thinks it looks like crap. If she couldn’t take chips or some other refined sugar and have a turkey sandwich EVERY SINGLE DAY my tiny nugget of a child would shrink smaller.
Good luck with the new school!
I like our public lunch program. Cuz we live in the country we get lots of locally sourced fruits & veggies & meats on the lunch menu making my kids public school lunch a much more hippie type meal than anything I would pack. 🙂 I buy fruits & veggies on sale at the Wal Marts, maybe it’s local, maybe it’s from Peru, who knows? Plus they offer PB&J sandwiches every single day as an alternative to whatever two hot meals. My more citified friends cannot believe the school gets away with having peanut butter on the menu let alone allowing me to pack it.
We’re not allowed to pack soda (because the cans explode too easily when opened by 6 year olds). They wanted to ban candy but someone pointed out pop tarts are offered regularly for breakfast.
That school sounds like a fucking nut house! OMG! So glad you got him out of there!
Ha! Loved the post, glad I’m not the only one who got tired of unpacking wilted uneaten food. I must have complained about it to my boys – when they were in upper grade school I smelled a suspiciously alcoholic smell in their room one day. Exploration revealed that they’d started stashing their leftovers under a sleeping bag on the floor in the back of their closet. The smell was caused by a significant number of fermenting (uneaten) pears.
Is this a re-post? The HNB school scared me for so many reasons – especially your post regarding politics. And on an aside, big hugs to Mili; she always gets a prayer from me.
My kids go to a nut ban school and it’s hell. And they can’t bring anything microwavable. They had a microwave up until about a year ago when it was suddenly declared a danger and removed.
Now, the only thing my daughter will eat is chicken quesidallas, which I have to cut into triangles and pack on ice. And my son basically goes without lunch every day- eating random things like celery stalks and chow mein noodles.
I would kill for a lunch lady.
We do have one, kinda sorta, but it’s for underpriviledged children whose parents can’t afford to send lunch.
My kids have snuck in there once or twice– the Spaghetti hot lunch is a lot more appealing than celery stalks and cold, soggy quesiddallas- but that left me mortified.
See! Yeah! I could have sent microwavable stuff, but they didn’t have one either! GAH!
Oh Aunt Becky yet another amazing post-however,
I still have not heard form you about the song I wrote and emailed to you?????? I know you are busy, but you cannot be THAT busy-well maybe you can-but please tell me what you thought of it-
I also gave you a blog award too-but you must come to my blog to see the details….
WHERE IS MAH SONG? I NEED OF MY SONG!
Oh – I just love this. I am surrounded by annoying ass green people too. I too try really hard to be “green”. But organic food is ridiculously priced compared to non-organic food. (not to mention it looks gross) Also I have 4 kids and two adults to feed. I hate the green snobs who look down on everyone else. Its funny to me how they glare at me when I use plastic bags (which I recycle by the way) and then pull off in their gas guzzling SUVS. I am so glad you got him out of that snobby school.
I love the blatant hypocrisy of the green people.
Omg, fuck those people. I can’t believe you stuck it out that long. There is a school like that in our hood and parents just luuuuuuuuuv it- it’s “such an amazing school.” I don’t want no associates degree person telling me what I can and can’t feed my child.
“uh, just no ‘nut stuff.'”
GEE, that’s fucking comforting. That kid with the nut allergy (the SIBLING of a student), his parents must be THRILLED by what you do NOT know about it.
You showed way too much restraint, if you ask me. You meant to ask me, didn’t you?
Anyway, your kid looks like he’ll be able to dish shit out should it come to that, so you get that going for you.
I really did show too much restraint. In hindsight, I cannot believe I didn’t kick more ass.
Although our school doesn’t have such strict food rules, my kids are VERY picky eaters, so I share your disdain of making lunches. Unfortunately mine don’t like what our Lunch Lady has to offer either. So boring, same old day after day lunches they will get. till they’re old enough to make their own.
I don’t know if Ben ever eats lunch, now that you mention it, but THANKFULLY I don’t see it.
Are you freakin kidding? If my kid showed up at home looking like that there would be hell to pay.
So glad he can enjoy hot lunches now.
My kids quit eating homemade lunches when they hit Jr High. It just wasnt cool anymore.
Yeah.
“a couple scratches”
YEAH.
I was a playground lady at lunch- the bag of sugar might be pushing it- but not the granola bar.
what I am stuck on is the brown bag issue- wtf? brown bags are made from trees, trees are a renewable resource and good for the environment, brown bags are recyclable. Bento boxes are plastic. plastic is bad for the environment and leeches into your food. Plastic can be recycled sometimes. But plastic takes lots of water to clean. water is not a renewable resource (necessarily)- we can’t make more water than whats in our water cycle system. Nature decides that. In CA, nature decides not to give us water and we are in drought. Bento boxes are not better than paper bags.
Just like electric cars are not better for the environment. Electricity comes from burning coal. Coal=smog and pollution. Electric cars run on batteries brought over on a large boat from africa- more pollution. The batteries are made by burning dirt- more pollution. The cars will have to be dealt with once they die, as well as their batteries- more pollution. See?
Nut Job Hippies are different from real hippies who actually study these things prior to making a decision- and prior to jumping on the nutjob bandwagon.
Oh trust me, I could have gone five rounds with what these people DIDN’T know..except how to be smugly superior to me. Because I am much younger. And sent my kid to school with a granola bar. Which is apparently like crack or something.
A FREAKING MEN!!!!!!!
Our preschool has a nutban. Ridiculous.
I have a friend who’s school does not allow fruit with skin on it, unless it has an organic sticker. Otherwise, the skin could possibly maybe have a pesticide on it and possibly render their 5 year old sterile or grow a third eye.
*jaw drops*
Holy shit.
I thought I had heard everything.until.now!!!
I am so onto you. You are a liar. If that lunch lady asked you to have her children you would tell her to fuck off. But I hope that doesn’t happen because Ben needs his hot lunch! Fuckin’ nutbuddies.
I’d just slip her a fifty and tell her to find someone else. But I would give her a fifty.
Oh I’m laughing so hard! I’m right there with you, honey. And you rock. I have kid who is 15 months. For half his short life, he barely ate anything. As in, 9 oz of formula a day (total) for like, months. Now, he’s doing great, but after the whole not-eating-not-gaining-weight-being-threatened-with-a-feeding-tube-from-the-dr thing, honestly, I don’t care what the eff he eats. We eat chicken nuggets and fries all the time, in spite of the fact I swore I’d never be that mom. So when my mom lectures me because we ate cookies for dinner, I just remember crying and trying desperately to get my son to eat. And then I laugh and give him another cookie.
Bwahahahahahaha! I remember having to force the kid to try pizza. And somehow I was supposed to get him to eat a sandwich made of…lunch meat? Soybutter? It just wasn’t going to happen.
my son is 2 and a half and barely eats anything…but meat. sadly his fav meat is cold hot dogs. omg i suck
See, I switched to a private school in grade 9 where they forbid us from eating anything but school lunches (and charged us a shitton for it, too). Everyone kept telling me how nice it would be not to have to make my own lunch anymore. And it would’ve been nice… except the food was like poison. Seriously, there were days I could not identify what I was putting in my mouth. And the taste… *shudders*. Needless to say, I was pretty damn pleased when I went back to public school the following year and was able to eat whatever the hell I wanted!
See, I switched to a private school in grade 9 where they forbid us from eating anything but school lunches (and charged us a shitton for it, too). Everyone kept telling me how nice it would be not to have to make my own lunch anymore. And it would’ve been nice… except the food was like poison. Seriously, there were days I could not identify what I was putting in my mouth. And the taste… *shudders*. Needless to say, I was pretty damn pleased when I went back to public school the following year and was able to eat whatever the hell I wanted!
Bwahahahahahaha!
My daughter goes to Lutheran Pre-K – the only thing they ban is being Satan. 😉
Now THAT I can get behind.
Did you ever see The New Adventures of Old Christine? Poor Christine was always trying to fit in with the other moms at her son’s private school. It was funny, but sometimes sad at the same time. We had to put our daughter in private school after she tested at 148 IQ at the age of 5. We didn’t fit in with the other parents at her school either. We didn’t make her go do any other activity she didn’t want to do. The other parents thought we were lazy- not pushing her harder. She stayed in that school for 5 years, then jumped into public school. I’m not really sure if it was better for her, she was younger than her classmates.- but at least we didn’t get the hairy eyeball from the other parents anymore.
When my daughter was 4 or so, her preschool teacher had a policy of healthy food first so she wouldn’t let the daughter eat her goldfish before her turkey sandwich. Of course, the kid didn’t eat her lunch. The next week, she was in a new preschool. I just don’t stand for that kind of crap.
Now, she’s at a school with a Nut Table. Isn’t that much nicer and more inclusive than a nut ban?
My son is at a preschool with a nut, candy, and because it’s at a synagogue, pork and shellfish ban. I totally respect their right to ban pork and shellfish (although I don’t think there are too many 3 year olds packing shrimp cocktail for lunch), and it being their playground and all, but these rules just about eliminate my family’s entire diet. Right now, I’m packing peeled Cuties and a bagel with cream cheese. That’s got most of the major food groups, right?
That school sounds like prison. Glad they’re no longer water-boarding you.
So what is going to happen when all these kids of the nut ban schools grow up and are working in the real world? Are they going to ban nuts entirely from the planet earth?
Right???? Why does the entire school have to make a sacrifice because of one kid’s allergies? (My son only eats 2 lunches – peanutbutter with fluff or cheese quesadillas) I feel bad for the kid, I do… but if you will die from breathing air tainted with peanutbutter breath, I really think that might be a good reason to be homeschooled!!
My husband works for the government. We qualify for reduced lunch cost. School lunches cost only40 cents a day. I can’t even pack a sammich for that cost. SCHOOL LUNCHES ROCK!
I always wanted a lunch lady…wish I had one now
btw i added Mushroom Printing to my blogroll (and my vocabulary)
When we were kids my mother used to fuck up and “accidentally” pack my Dad’s sandwiches in our lunch. Nothing like sitting down to the lunch table, opening up your sandwich and finding peanut butter and banana peppers, or a peanut butter and sweet pickle relish sandwich. BARF.
I think this may have been what turned my sister and I both on to hot lunch. Picky assholes that we were.
That school sounds like a prison! So glad you got Ben out. No teacher should ever single out a student with autism, or ANY 6 yr. old for that matter, to “make an example” of them in front of the class. She sounds like a nazi to me. Public school has its advantages, lunch ladies rock! I taught in a public high school for years and i would go help the lunch ladies at breaks and lunch, just because they were so sweet and so much fun. They would never let anyone go hungry, they knew the students and cared about them.
I’d have gone in there and ripped that teacher a new asshole!! and threatened a lawsuit for: ADA discrimination and negligent infliction of emotional distress!! Sanctimonious tree huggers are almost as bad as people who use the bible as a weapon.
And before anyone rips me, I both hug trees and used to attend services monthly, where ALL peoples were encouraged to attend of ALL faiths.
Grrrr! Rip ‘um next time!
Dude, I LOVED school food. Everyone still calls me crazy but the mashed potatos and gravy and salad dressing was the best and I have still never found anything better. We also had these peanutbutter buckeye bars that were the bomb. Like seriously, people would trade 10 page papers for just ONE tiny little square of that deliciousness. My mouth is watering, maybe my kid will sneak some food home to me.
UNRELATED, wtf! I just noticed the “Stealing gives you herpes.” at the bottom of the page and I fucking love you so much more than I did not two minutes ago. (which was a lot, by the way) If I were your neighbor, I’d be your friend. I know your woes with a pick axe, my husband made me hack out a tree with one and I couldn’t walk for like 3 weeks, fucking beastly tool. I heart it.
I didn’t get a lunch lady until high school, but it was great since my mom declared that I was on my own as soon as I turned 9.
I was a strange kid who loved vegetables and would beg my parents to make brussels sprouts for dinner, though, so I might have fit in at that place food wise.
As soon as I had a lunch lady I switched to cheese pizza and cheese fries. That giant pump full of nacho “cheese” was my life. Thank god for the fast metabolism of the young.
All that said, his old school was run a group of new money, tacky, pretentious twat-wattles, and I suggest you tell them as much as soon as you’re sure you’ll never need his transcripts from them again.
Best post ever!
Okay. . . I haven’t been hanging around here very long, but I still thought it was GREAT!
Aw, now I’m all blushy-pants. Thank you.
My brother got pushed off a tree-stump at school and when my mum went to pick him up, they were all ‘He’s hurt his leg, he’s refusing to walk on it, but we think it’s not nearly as bad as he’s making it out to be.’
Well, except for the part where it was BROKEN.
In the school’s defence, it turned out that my brother had a bone cyst where the break was, so it there was no swelling or any of the usual signs of broken bones. Plus, his teacher was geniunely horrified and completely guilt-ridden when he showed up two days later in a cast to his groin.
ZOMG. That’s awful! The teacher must have felt TERRIBLE.
I went to a catholic elementary (where I was the token heathen since I wasn’t Catholic) and we only got hot lunch once a month. And then it was only boiled hot dogs, potato salad, chips and a rice krispie bar. We were just lucky if we made it to the end of the month without the milk going sour because there was only one freezer and who knows how old the milk on the bottom of it was…
Holy CRAPBALLS. My mom always packed a nasty lunch for me, but man, MAN, *shudders*
Eh, clearly I lived. Although who KNOWS what it did to my poor growing brain. I could have been a genius or at least competent…
When we asked for something different for lunch (which was normally pb&j, fruit, and a Little Debbie), we got a slice of generic American cheese between two buttered slices of white bread. Blargh…
I remember reading about this incident. OUTRAGE your must have felt! I can’t believe they stuck with that whole running into a fence story. Did you ever get the real story?
Nope! Never. SO happy that we’re out of there. SO HAPPY. Never looking back, ever.
I know ALL about those schools! I, my sister-in-law, and my sister all had boys the same age. My sister-in-law found this “neat place for the boys” called “The Out-of-doors School.” For me, the problem was that it was too expensive, but not for them! They just had to enroll their boys in it, and then the fun began. They had to bring their lunches, also in paper bags, but while the restrictions were somewhat tight, they were nothing like you described. One of the boys thrived. My sister’s son, on the other hand, had difficulty adjusting. He had some social issues that the other parents couldn’t deal with–“Mommie, that boy over there said he was going to pee on my heart!” To make matters worse, my sister, who was none to stable herself, packed him the strangest assortment of foodstuffs for lunch. The stuff was so strange, and his behavior was so…well, let’s just say it was undisciplined and leave it at that, that the director threw him out.
I’m a happy girl! MY boy grew up eating peanut butter sandwiches and spaghettios, and has a good steady job, a wife who is brilliant and adorable, and 16 month old twins whom I adore. He also writes a terrific blog when he has time.
“And what about the other two boys?” you ask. “Did they succeed in life like your boy?”
Here’s my response to that–“not so much.”
Ok, so I live in Misery with three of my darling children. Have you ever been to Misery Aunt Becky? Here in Missouri, even the public school system bans nut products.
My son has a mental health issue, otherwise lovingly known as bipolar, but the school has been kind enough to classify him in an IEP as merely “odd.” Anyway, enough about all that, T would not have survived the first 6 years of life without peanut butter. At two the doctor would say, ‘why don’t you give him hotdogs?’ all kids apparently love hotdogs. Except mine. He did not eat anything but peanut butter for 6 years, sometimes with jelly, but mostly it is all about the peanut butter. Even now in 7th grade, he still occasionally wants a peanut butter sandwich.
I am of the exceedingly poor mom variety, and do not make enough money to pay for the damn school lunch here, at almost $2.00 per lunch per child, per day that is around $30.00/week. SO…the school system has come up with an outstanding way to further ostracize my ‘odd’ child. He has to sit with all the other ‘odd’ children who are forced by their nazi parents to take their lunch everyday. Don’t worry…I hear about this from my son at least twice a week. Needless to say, the lunch people are not my faves here in Misery.
I hate to admit this, but those restrictions you were mentioning? That’s what goes on in the public system up here. Right up to singling the kids out (which I agree is total crap). My nephews’ school sent a note home saying they couldn’t have peanut butter 72hrs before attending. Eff that. school my husband worked at singled out the kids that brought ‘candy’. Jerks.
Oh, and in a stroke of brilliance, for the schools with lunch programs, they evaluated each component of a meal (so spaghetti, then meatballs, then sauce) separately and failed a bunch of perfectly good lunches – gah!
Private schools? Far less nutball.
My daughter’s lunch for the first day of school: bologna and pepperoni. Take THAT hippies!
Schools like this exist? You are required to pack your child’s lunch and you have to follow their ridiculous guidelines? Every kid needs a good dose of over-processed, sugar-laden, not-really-food food. It’s a right of passage.
That nut-ban school sounds like they’re enormously out of touch. Good thing you had another option.
My kids attend a public school with lunches that resemble cold vomit on crackers. I told them that, this school year, we’d probably skip the school lunches altogether and they were THRILLED with that idea. (In previous years, I’ve limited them to 2 school lunches a week.) Plus, for a family who is pinching pennies (yep, that would be US), $1.50 is a lot of money to spend on a shitty school lunch. I try to pack things that can be put back in the fridge for another day if they’re not eaten. PLUS?! Most of the time, they would gag at the sight of the main option and choose a buttered bagel instead. $1.50 for a BAGEL? I can get bagels for 30 cents each! OUR Lunch People can suck it.
I live out in BFE (bumfuckegypt) so I won’t have to worry about this kind of stuff until like, 2056 as we don’t usually catch on to things right away. Also, my kids will most definitely be going to public school – I went and I turned out fine. Right?
If only there were a “love” button. I have been through this insanity.
The lunches here are horrifying…and expensive. My kid would croak if she couldn’t have PB.
Her preschool last yr didn’t allow junk (candy etc.) but I think that was mostly for a)beehavior and b)Johnny has a candy bar and I don’t tantrums.
I send mostly healthy stuff…I guess…PB&J (on white bread, omg!!), yogurt, string cheese. goldfish…today she got some fruit snacks & maybe a cookie next time.
As many Mushroom Prints as humanly possible! Rants are the best.
I may be a public school teacher rather than a public school lunch lady, but I’m going to take that blessing anyhow.
And thank you. Because it gets a little exhausting being bashed and blamed for all things these days.
Especially when I’m a damn good teacher, thankyouverymuch.
Aunt Becky, you’re teh sh!t. Thank you for making me laugh, yet again, at an obscenely late (or is it early at 5:05 a.m.?) hour, and wake the whole house up.
Thank you for taking up for public schools (even if it’s just the lunch ladies, who awesomely rock the awesomesauce with awesomeness). They get too much flack these days, and I personally think if you have a mother fucking problem with them, pull your rugrat out, and YOU try putting up with him or her all fucking day while trying to teach him/her something. [/mini rant]
I applaud you on not sticking with the private/hippie school.
Public schools RULE and they don’t deserve the shit they get. WE deserve shit for not funding them.
/steps off soapbox.
And this is what it took for me to comment and not just read.
My autistic daughter is the pickiest eater on the planet to the point her camp lunches that i have to make every.single.day are always, the same, slapped together in a bento box without the fancy cutouts and shapes, its all about function here. But she’s been in public school since Kindergarten and loves LOVES school lunch. All the Lunch ladies know her by name. i make sure that lunch account has money, and somedays she eats breakfast! i dont care that school lunch has about half the daily calories for a kid, she eats it and i’m damn happen about it.
Huzzah lunch ladies!