The Jungle In The Lunch Room

Happy Halloween everyone!

Our lunchroom was in a dungeon,

damp and mildewy,

a foundation made of boulders,

painted yellow, trying to look sunny.

A quarter could buy you a questionable hot lunch,

seaweed green beans that slithered on your plate,

bottoms of leather shoes, masquerading as salisbury steak.

Black widow spider webs sat on the lunch ladies heads,

their claws enclosed in stretchy latex gloves.

Steam billowed out of the food trays,

fogging up the glass between use,

like some ferocious dragon,

keeping the malicious lunch ladies

from escaping their cage.

We choked down our food,

ran for the door,

out of reach of the lunch ladies,

surviving another day.

Reviews

[Julian]

Just hopped back online for a moment and I am so glad I saw this one!! LOVE it- the imagery is so perfect, one can again experience the delicate aromas, hear the melodious clatter of trays, flatware and the occasional retching sounds from some corner of the room....we had the option of bringing our lunch, which I did, but the sights and sounds were always there!!! Thanks for this trip into the past!

[NormaZ]

Thanks for the review Julian! I love the occasional retching sounds. We could bring our lunch too, but I was always a hot lunch person. 😛

[Vol]

NormaZ,
I am not sure if the world is ready for your reality! The reality of all the current failures of 21st century education in America... If I was still teaching I'd have this one hanging on my classroom wall.
Vol

[NormaZ]

Ha,ha! Lunch in the 1960’s!

[John the Baptist]

And I thought an army mess hall was bad. True, we had to put up with creamed chip beef on toast, which was informally known as SOS (s**t on a shingle), but I never saw slithering green beans.

[NormaZ]

The SOS sounds pretty bad, even without the slithering green beans! Thanks for reading!

[Julie McCarthy (juliesp..]

Our school didn’t have hot lunches or a cafeteria we brought our own in a paper bag in wrap or bought it in a queue at the school kiosk
Liked this write ✍️

[NormaZ]

I don’t think you missed anything! Thanks for the review.

[Chris Shaw]

Ha ha. Those school dinners were something else weren’t they? You took me back Norma and I can see the slop, just about to be dolloped on the plate:) Talk about unappetizing. Great read.

Chris

[NormaZ]

Thank you Chis. I got out of eating those slippery green bean by putting them into my empty milk carton when the lunch ladies weren’t watching!

[W. Barrett Munn]

I think we must have gone to the same school or those lunch people sure do get around.

Winston

[NormaZ]

I think a lot of us had that experience 😊 Thanks for reading my poem!

[Ken Simm.]

Oh, I so identfy with this and not from my teaching days.

[NormaZ]

Ha, ha, I wonder if lunch ever got better than when I was a kid? Hope so! Thanks for commenting!

[Ken Simm.]

Still had lumpy pudding, black mash and that amorphous pink stuff that no one could identify. Even when I was teaching.

[Arundass TP]

Beautiful writing. Loved each line you created. Enjoyed reading

[NormaZ]

Thank you Arundass, much appreciated your review!

[jacob erin-cilberto]

This sounds like the ladies at White Castle when we were younger and they were 8 cents a piece.
We used to ask for a dozen sliders and they would get really huffy...and say "They are called White Castles"
we weren't demeaning them...we were using a term of endearment.
And now they advertise them as sliders.
Our grade school and high school did not have a lunchroom that I remember..maybe we did....and I am just getting senile.
In college we had eating halls...
some of the food puzzled us as to what it actually was.
a very entertaining poem here...Happy Halloween indeed.

[NormaZ]

Some of this poem is true, our lunch room was in the basement of an old school, and the foundation was boulders painted yellow, and hot lunch was a quarter. I don’t remember the lunch ladies being mean, although one made me eat my green beans, which were slimy! Thanks for your review!