Lunch with Friends
A sad tune from Rent plays in my mind, 160 and 180, equals 340 lunches over two years.
We Three Caballeros, aka The Supremes, sit on one end of the cafeteria table.
Beside us, The Secretaries, three more that signed on to be assistants to our leadership.
(Whispering the tune to Friends on the Other Side- Dr. Facilier from the movie The Princess Frog.)mThe Normals sit on the other side, they call us the OWO-Clan.
An anonymous group of band friends completes the party,
making for a rather eclectic association of seventh-grade boys.
Navigating the obstacle course of the hallways from Schmitt’s to Sayer’s, I straightway to the cafeteria.
I’m usually the first one there by a millisecond.
Inconspicuously, we sit initially in silence, moments of awkward solitude.
Formulating who will say what first or in comeback.
Typically, its Carlos or Garrett who breaks the ice with something shockingly inappropriate to get us all laughing.
We sit in the back and our table is first to go get sustenance most days.
The Barbie Doll table is next. Some call them the Drama Queens.
They have a different boyfriend (demonic voice) EVERY SINGLE DAY!
They play those boys like a game of Go-Fish, one after another.
It’s hard to stand in front of them in line because they are like a group of annoying turkeys, gobbling and squawking, scrabbling to be one-up on each other.
We boys have learned the hard way to not talk or horseplay or we’ll be sent to the wall, a warning, waiting in humiliation until the last.
So we ignore the Barbies, avoiding being sucked into their riff-raff-rafter.
Back at the table, betting on lunches.
We bet earlier who the teacher will call on in class, loser pays at lunch!
A deck of cards for a beloved game of Food Poker, I reign victorious.
From our gentleman’s agreement called a Friend-Debt, the winner gets to choose from the medium and lower-level items.
Generally, I choose the win-win option.
I prefer not to swindle my friends, lunch is a sacred thing.
Laughing at things that 13-year-old boys feel humorous, Mrs. Taylor appeared and Garrett got detention for wheezing.
When called out, he said it was a normal bodily-function, and therefore got an extra detention.
As soon as she turned her back, we were back to laughing.
At least we didn’t get busted for what we were laughing at in the first place.
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