Flashback: When Kids Actually Won! (7th Grade)
In retrospect, this following story is my fondest school memory of my middle school years. Back then, I thought I was getting old as my odometer had incremented into the double digits and swiftly accelerated into the teenage years. Of course, looking back, that was just silly talk!
Let me start by mentioning that my middle school was rough by Iowan standards. My school was located in a difficult neighborhood filled with many social-economically challenged kids, notorious for fights, suspensions and expulsions. I guess that sums up why I felt my 6th-8th grade education was a waste of time. Regardless of this, I survived, trudging through my days, being constantly bullied by others with very little retaliation from me. At times, I felt like a loner trying to find my way. Some days, I hung out with some less that ideal role models which caused me to receive disciplinary action from time to time. Looking back, I'm sure some of them did drugs. I felt like I needed to partake in their company, succumbing to peer pressure just so I could "fit in". I suppose at that age, that's what everyone does; the social hierarchy is large and complex. Friends that I could trust in elementary school suddenly weren't the same friends I thought they were.
Back before the days of kids having credit cards and cell phones, there was this: Cash, paper bills and coins used for buying grade D (at best) school lunches. Remember hearing the old jokes about bullies beating up kids for their lunch money? Yeah that happened at my school. There was always one other option, bring a sack lunch, prepared by your mom, packed in a brown paper bag. However, 75%+ of us kids chose the hot school lunch because it was easy and cheap. Beside, hot food always tasted better that a cold bologna sandwich, in my opinion. I fondly remember waiting for "pizza Friday" where the school served rectangular-shaped cardboard cutouts with a few pieces of brown mystery meat dashed with a tiny helping of white half-melted plastic stuff they deemed as cheese.
The lunchtime procession consisted of us all marching down two flights of stairs like soldiers into a windowless prison for a much needed 30 minute break from the mind numbing classwork. From there, the options were to sit down somewhere on a long white bench table and open your "cold" lunch, or get in line like cattle, grab a cartoon of milk and colored plastic divider tray, and be served several piles of low quality food. That was the choice of the masses, as we stepped across the hollow sounding laminate faux brick color flooring. Supposedly, the area was an old high school pool that was abandoned, but rumors of other things that were much more sordid existed below those creaky floors. Just to make things more ghostly, fallout shelter signs were placarded everywhere on the walls in this dimly lit area, in case of fallout from a nuclear winter. Regardless, the strange odors that wafted around made this environment feel mildly toxic, but I digress.
This was the daily grind; the routine that was laid out before us, consistent, unbending. Of course, pent up energy needs to be released, and lunchtime was that time. I'm sure we probably deserved the punishment that was to come, however that didn't mean we couldn't fight back!
It was 7th grade and something had happened. Maybe we were just being too noisy at lunch, I don't recall but we had done nothing outlandish like start a massive food fight. Regardless, the teachers had had enough with us. They had sentenced us to BUM BUM BUM, alphabetical seating! We all gasped in horror as we digested this decree. I sat back and processed this internally, "so, unless I am good friends coincidentally with another 'Smith' [in my case], I was to be either sit and try and do small talk with some nearly random stranger or go about my lunch quietly and then leave?" I continued pondering as I started to get more and more upset. "It's bad enough recess was removed from our schedule, and now this: A half hour of sitting by someone I don't know or even worse, can't stand? Outrageous!"
I wasn't the only one with this opinion. Kids like to talk, of course. Usually it's to spread rumors about "Tommy" and what he did or didn't do or to alert others where the bullies are. However, this single proclamation unified my entire 7th grade class and we weren't going to let it stand. In the hallways, discussion occurred as to what we could do. Quiet chatter formed in small groups until we had all somehow formulated a plan en-mass. We were ALL going to rebel: Not with fights, not with anger, but with a STRIKE! A FOOD STRIKE! The plan: Come Monday, we agreed to either bring a sack lunch or go hungry, forgoing the $1.25 a meal slop their called "lunch." The idea caught on like wildfire, as more and more kids caught wind about this strike, the more everyone liked it as a solution. "Don't eat, let the school prepare and waste food, losing tons of money." I remember telling my mom this, and she thought it was a fun and bold thing for us all to organize. She happily made me a lunch for the first time I think in my entire life.
The following week when lunchtime came, all of us sat down quietly in the lunchroom, hardly a word, about half of us with a sack lunch and the rest with nothing. I remember counting only eight kids going through the lunch line that day; all special needs kids. The teachers motioned for us to get in line, but no one budged. We all sat quietly until the clock hand ticked and the buzzer went off, us returning to class.
The next day, the same thing happened, none of us went through the line; all this piping hot food product just sitting there. The school had to prepare it per government requirements, but no one was buying up their slog; even for the cheap price of a buck twenty-five.
On Wednesday, there were more people with sack lunches and it was the same story, no one was buying and we didn't seem to care! However this day ended differently; the teacher in charge interrupted our silence, announcing, "From now on, we will allow you to sit freely where ever we wanted, effectively immediately." The loudest roar I had ever heard from us kids emanated throughout the prison walls, much louder than any spirit rally, echoing back up the stairs. We were freed; we had won this battle!
Looking back, I still don't know how this all got organized and but yet, how effective our strike was. It's something we felt was important to all of us; like they, the machine had stripped us from our last refuge, our 30 minutes of freedom of with friends from the drudgery of the classroom. I remember my mother commenting much later how my principal actually thought we kids brilliant for devising such a plan, and that it made her smile internally. Nothing that organized happened again with my classmates until my high school years. However, a very silly story did ensue that I will have to tell at another time!
Let me start by mentioning that my middle school was rough by Iowan standards. My school was located in a difficult neighborhood filled with many social-economically challenged kids, notorious for fights, suspensions and expulsions. I guess that sums up why I felt my 6th-8th grade education was a waste of time. Regardless of this, I survived, trudging through my days, being constantly bullied by others with very little retaliation from me. At times, I felt like a loner trying to find my way. Some days, I hung out with some less that ideal role models which caused me to receive disciplinary action from time to time. Looking back, I'm sure some of them did drugs. I felt like I needed to partake in their company, succumbing to peer pressure just so I could "fit in". I suppose at that age, that's what everyone does; the social hierarchy is large and complex. Friends that I could trust in elementary school suddenly weren't the same friends I thought they were.
Back before the days of kids having credit cards and cell phones, there was this: Cash, paper bills and coins used for buying grade D (at best) school lunches. Remember hearing the old jokes about bullies beating up kids for their lunch money? Yeah that happened at my school. There was always one other option, bring a sack lunch, prepared by your mom, packed in a brown paper bag. However, 75%+ of us kids chose the hot school lunch because it was easy and cheap. Beside, hot food always tasted better that a cold bologna sandwich, in my opinion. I fondly remember waiting for "pizza Friday" where the school served rectangular-shaped cardboard cutouts with a few pieces of brown mystery meat dashed with a tiny helping of white half-melted plastic stuff they deemed as cheese.
The lunchtime procession consisted of us all marching down two flights of stairs like soldiers into a windowless prison for a much needed 30 minute break from the mind numbing classwork. From there, the options were to sit down somewhere on a long white bench table and open your "cold" lunch, or get in line like cattle, grab a cartoon of milk and colored plastic divider tray, and be served several piles of low quality food. That was the choice of the masses, as we stepped across the hollow sounding laminate faux brick color flooring. Supposedly, the area was an old high school pool that was abandoned, but rumors of other things that were much more sordid existed below those creaky floors. Just to make things more ghostly, fallout shelter signs were placarded everywhere on the walls in this dimly lit area, in case of fallout from a nuclear winter. Regardless, the strange odors that wafted around made this environment feel mildly toxic, but I digress.
This was the daily grind; the routine that was laid out before us, consistent, unbending. Of course, pent up energy needs to be released, and lunchtime was that time. I'm sure we probably deserved the punishment that was to come, however that didn't mean we couldn't fight back!
It was 7th grade and something had happened. Maybe we were just being too noisy at lunch, I don't recall but we had done nothing outlandish like start a massive food fight. Regardless, the teachers had had enough with us. They had sentenced us to BUM BUM BUM, alphabetical seating! We all gasped in horror as we digested this decree. I sat back and processed this internally, "so, unless I am good friends coincidentally with another 'Smith' [in my case], I was to be either sit and try and do small talk with some nearly random stranger or go about my lunch quietly and then leave?" I continued pondering as I started to get more and more upset. "It's bad enough recess was removed from our schedule, and now this: A half hour of sitting by someone I don't know or even worse, can't stand? Outrageous!"
I wasn't the only one with this opinion. Kids like to talk, of course. Usually it's to spread rumors about "Tommy" and what he did or didn't do or to alert others where the bullies are. However, this single proclamation unified my entire 7th grade class and we weren't going to let it stand. In the hallways, discussion occurred as to what we could do. Quiet chatter formed in small groups until we had all somehow formulated a plan en-mass. We were ALL going to rebel: Not with fights, not with anger, but with a STRIKE! A FOOD STRIKE! The plan: Come Monday, we agreed to either bring a sack lunch or go hungry, forgoing the $1.25 a meal slop their called "lunch." The idea caught on like wildfire, as more and more kids caught wind about this strike, the more everyone liked it as a solution. "Don't eat, let the school prepare and waste food, losing tons of money." I remember telling my mom this, and she thought it was a fun and bold thing for us all to organize. She happily made me a lunch for the first time I think in my entire life.
The following week when lunchtime came, all of us sat down quietly in the lunchroom, hardly a word, about half of us with a sack lunch and the rest with nothing. I remember counting only eight kids going through the lunch line that day; all special needs kids. The teachers motioned for us to get in line, but no one budged. We all sat quietly until the clock hand ticked and the buzzer went off, us returning to class.
The next day, the same thing happened, none of us went through the line; all this piping hot food product just sitting there. The school had to prepare it per government requirements, but no one was buying up their slog; even for the cheap price of a buck twenty-five.
On Wednesday, there were more people with sack lunches and it was the same story, no one was buying and we didn't seem to care! However this day ended differently; the teacher in charge interrupted our silence, announcing, "From now on, we will allow you to sit freely where ever we wanted, effectively immediately." The loudest roar I had ever heard from us kids emanated throughout the prison walls, much louder than any spirit rally, echoing back up the stairs. We were freed; we had won this battle!
Looking back, I still don't know how this all got organized and but yet, how effective our strike was. It's something we felt was important to all of us; like they, the machine had stripped us from our last refuge, our 30 minutes of freedom of with friends from the drudgery of the classroom. I remember my mother commenting much later how my principal actually thought we kids brilliant for devising such a plan, and that it made her smile internally. Nothing that organized happened again with my classmates until my high school years. However, a very silly story did ensue that I will have to tell at another time!