Lunch at School

Ah, the school cafeteria… When I was a kid, we sat at long tables, sharing the attached bench seats. I loved the opportunity to have a guest join me for lunch at school. I loved it when anyone at my table had a guest. My favorite thing about it was that the guests would sit among the children and entertain us all. Grandparents’ Day provided a wide variety of personalities upon which to rest my attention. It was simply glorious.

Now as a parent, I find lunch with my children at school to be a completely different experience. The children still sit at long rectangular tables, but children with guests don’t usually get to sit with their friends and share this good fortune. Instead, the children and their guests are banished to the back of the cafeteria to sit at their choice of three round tables. I call these the “Prison Visitation” tables. The only way that you can avoid sitting at the PV tables is if they are already full of other prisoners and their visitors, which seems to be a rare occurrence. This is my fourth year to visit my little inmates at school, and not once have I been allowed to sit at a regular table with the kids. Not even once.

So today, I sat with Parker at the PV tables, looking out at the room full of kindergarten lunchers. For the first time, I noticed a special dynamic surrounding one kindergarten table in particular. Apparently, there is something really great about sitting in this specific location. Some kids, who are clearly the cool crowd, sit at this same table every day. The chairs may as well have their names engraved on the back. Classmates vie for the remaining seats, and it is apparently quite sad for a person to be turned away. What is this magical table of coolness and lunchtime joy? The peanut allergy table. But you don’t have to have a peanut allergy in order to sit there. You’re eligible if you bought your lunch from the school cafeteria because, as a rule, school provided lunches are peanut free. Today, two girls were forced to move from the allergy table so there would be enough room for the kids with actual allergies. They wore their saddest expressions as they picked up their lunch trays and relocated to the boring, regular, non-allergic table. You’d think someone just told them their chicken strips used to be cute, fluffy little baby chicks. Heartbreaking, isn’t it?

I never thought that having an allergy would be hailed as a status symbol, but I guess it kind of is. Well, in kindergarten anyway. While my children will never know the glory of having their own special seat at the peanut allergy table, I can rejoice in the fact that we always have the option of slapping together a pb&j and calling it a meal. Amen!