School Lunches

"Ringgggggggggggg" goes the bell followed immediately by hordes of students rushing out of their classrooms like tiny ants scattered across the school. Just like the daily routine, nothing ever changes. In this moment, we all have one goal and one goal only. Get to the Lunchroom. I imagine the newbies, aka the transfer students who aren’t yet familiar with the lunch room etiquette, would be sweating bullets at this point taking the longest possible route there...big mistake. Lines at the cafe are usually extremely long, so being prompt is imperative. But getting in the line was only the first battle. After you receive your tray of gray clumpy looking food, the next fight ahead is finding a seat. You’re holding your tray, head up, looking out into the sea of colored, sectioned off guppies, and your heart starts thumping --you need a place to eat. At this point, it seems the only option is to slowly and awkwardly make your way over to that seat all the way in the rear of the cafeteria where the sunlight just happened to be nonexistent, right? The cafe is split up table by table according to your clique. That was probably an understatement; let’s just say the cafeteria is split up by your entire physical appearance. This aspect of the lunchroom was extremely vital. You had better belong to a social class or you'd most likely end up eating your 5 day old stale pizza in the girls bathroom stall. Okay, so let’s rewind....you’re back at the line, and you just received your food with tray in hand. Again, you’re staring out into the crowd trying your best to look at least a little bit confident. Your eyes scroll across the tables... one... by... one... by… one. All the way to the left you find The Prima Donnas, with their pink notebooks, pink book bags, and glittery everything. Moving right along, you soon find the Anime Freaks, the Chess Geeks, and of course, the Neuroscience Nerds. Now, we’re at the center of the world. Appropriately enough, you find the Jocks. Almost naturally, you think to yourself that eating lunch there is not even close to an option. The next table over are the cheerleaders and well….yeah. All the way on the right you find the Goths, dressed in all black with black eyeliner and lipstick smeared across their faces. After this thorough assessment is complete, you probably just noticed you’re the only one still standing with tray in hand and that the lunch lines are closed. “Excuse me kid, I need to close the stand and you’re standing in the way”, says the typically overweight, curly haired, bearded lunch lady. Time to make a decision. If you were lucky, you’d find a decent looking girl or boy sitting alone somewhere in the crevices and you can eat your lunch with them. Although there’s no guarantee they’d be their tomorrow, a feeling of relief and triumph overwhelm you because you’ve made it through another day in the Lunchroom.