Lunch Lady

Growing up, Mom worked at Christina Huddleston Elementary School – which was my elementary school. She was part secretary, part recess lady, part lunch lady extraordinaire. I enjoyed all of the perks of having my Mom work at my school: I rode with her to work in the morning and she drove me home after school (totally avoiding the dreaded bus most days), if I forgot my lunch money - she was just down the hall, and everybody liked Mom – so I didn’t suffer any of the embarrassment by association.

It can be hard to believe that I actually liked having Mom around during my elementary years. For one, I was 12 when I left elementary school, so I had yet to become an all-knowing teen full of anger and righteousness. For two, my friends all thought she was “cool.” Here’s why:

Every little Boy or Girl Scout knew to hit up my Mom for whatever goodies they were selling for fundraising. My Mom could not say no to kids in kerchiefs or sashes. Every spring we had boxes and boxes of Girl Scout cookies and it was never a problem.

If Mom was supervising recess, she’d let kids play with her bullhorn. Mostly girls would get giddy with excitement and power of hearing their little voices boom across the playground.

For lunchroom duty, kids had to take turns wiping down the tables. She turned this into a coveted chore by tossing the dish rag up in the air for kids to grab like a jump shot.

And my favorite memory of having my Mom work at my elementary was on my last day of 6th grade. It was a big day for me and my fellow 12 year-olds. Mom was supervising our lunch period, and somehow we convinced her that our last hurrah as 6th graders should include a food fight. She set the parameters: it could only last for one minute and we had to clean up every last morsel. And for that entire minute of food-flinging, I beamed. I knew there wasn’t another lunch lady in the entire land that would allow a food fight, and I knew my Mom was cool.