I’m trying to find a little part-time job to fill a little of the lot of idol time I have. It’s a lot yet I love being retired as it represents forty years of working like a dog to enjoy life before I croak.
My first part-time job in retirement was substitute teaching for the charter school system of Newark. Tough crowd. I basically got ignored for an hour by twenty or so students. Then the bell rang and I’d get ignored by a fresh set of students. I liked the routine of it all until the day a boy plunged a #2 pencil into my chest. While I waited in the emergency room, I decided to end the gig in favor of something less risky.
So I started a new career as a lunch lady. Ask around cuz this is totally true and without exaggeration. The Watsessing Grammar School was a five minute walk from my house and most of the kids on my block went there. After I told the principal about the stabbing, she assigned me to a kindergarten class. I knew about five of the kids from my neighborhood and their parents loved gaining access to the inside skinny of the school.
What did they do all day? Was it safe? Most importantly, what did they eat? Ask the lunch lady.
My hours were 11:30 to 1:30. Hardly grueling. The teacher I relieved practically broke into tears of joy upon my arrival and she’d been teaching thirty years. I didn’t get it at first but twenty five kindergarteners are easily more challenging than one pencil pusher. The neediness. As a lunch lady my first duty was to escort the kids who didn’t bring a nutritious lunch to the cafeteria then back to the classroom where everyone – lunch packers and school fed – ate together. Occasionally food envy broke out between the groups especially the day Maura pulled out a freshly baked brownie. Damn. The school feeders closed in on her like West Side Story.
The cafeteria offered questionable lunches like the pizza taco or the taco pizza. That was Tuesday and Thursday. Wednesday was peanut butter and jelly day and Monday and Friday was my nightmare … a waffle drenched in maple syrup. And it got everywhere. First their tiny little hands. Then my face although it did tighten up a few wrinkles. If the dessert was cling peaches I opened everyone’s container (little hands) and inevitably ending up smelling like fruit and syrup. For some reason, packets of ketchup were included regardless of the main course. I hate ketchup and drew the line at touching it which resulted in smashed ketchup packets all over the desks, chairs and floor. The chocolate milk containers looked exactly like the ones I had in my grammar school days several hundred years ago. Same manufacturer too. Talk about a dynasty.
Part Two coming soon.