Who wants lunch?

I’ve been seeing lots of “back to school” advertisements on TV lately. In the past, these kinds of ads would strike fear in my heart and send me running for the nearest calendar – I’d have to reassure myself that it was still officially the middle of summer, and there were plenty of days left to sleep until noon, or to go to the movies at 9 o’clock on a Tuesday night, or not to worry about whether or not I had anyone to eat lunch with…

This was always my biggest fear on the first day of school. In high school, lunch was broken up into three different 27-minute sections (yes, we had 27 whole minutes to eat lunch) and which of those sections you were assigned would depend on the rest of your schedule. On the first day of school, I’d seek out my extremely small circle of friends and hope and pray that at least one of them had the same lunch time as me. Unfortunately, this didn’t always work out, and I’d be relegated to lunch with a subset of friends – who, in reality were not MY friends at all, but rather friends of my friends – or, the worst case scenario: lunch by myself.

Now, lunch by yourself in high school MUST be avoided at all costs. There is nothing worse than being shy, unpopular, and an obvious target for ridicule. If you eat lunch by yourself, you might as well wear a big bull’s-eye and carry a sign that says, “hurl insults here.” What made matters worse was the fact that my school was run by fascist Nazis… or at least that’s what I made them out to be. There was a rule against being in the library if you weren’t either with a class, or in the middle of a scheduled study hall (and, unbelievably in my mind, the study hall rule only applied if you were a senior – freshmen, sophomores and juniors with study halls had to be in assigned classrooms). I mean, what kind of SCHOOL doesn’t allow you in the LIBRARY?? Was there really that much of a problem with kids sneaking in and reading up on physics and Shakespeare and the Civil War when they weren’t supposed to be? Was there some sort of library “incident” in the past where a gang of rowdy, slacker students showed up and played keep-away with the librarian’s “due back by” date stamp? What's the worst that could possibly happen in the library -- somebody might LEARN something in an unsupervised manner??

I can understand not wanting kids to cut class and hide out in the library, but if you can PROVE that you’re scheduled for either a study hall or lunch, why shouldn’t you be able to be in the library when you want to be? Fortunately for me, my social downfall could also, at times, be an asset. Being the shy, polite kid doesn’t usually have its advantages, but the one thing I WAS always able to do was build up a certain amount of trust with most teachers. If you were nice to them, and you were quiet, and you smiled and minded your own business, there were times you could get away with just about anything. That’s not to say I ever DID “get away with” anything much – except for hanging out in the library. Librarians came to know me – “oh, it’s that nice, quiet girl” – and my presence amongst the books was never questioned. Luckily, I only had to use the pathetic “lunchtime in the library” tactic a few times, mostly when friends were out sick or on field trips and I knew I’d be the only one in the lunchroom. Ah, memories…

The other thing brought to mind by these “back to school” ads is a question – can someone please tell me why they start selling autumn clothing in the department stores in TEXAS in the middle of JULY? Do people not know what the weather is like in July in Texas? For that matter, do people not know what the weather is like in OCTOBER in Texas? I don’t need any sweaters right now… I don’t need corduroy pants… I don’t need knee-high boots… I don’t need flannel pajamas… and I’m not GOING to need any of this stuff for a long time. I might, however, need a new swimsuit – but good luck finding anything decent at this time of year. All that’s left are the “clearance sale” rejects that no one else wants. You’d think the stores in Texas would adjust their “seasonal” merchandise to actually match up with the seasonable changes in the weather. Or seasonabilty, if you will. (Ha! Faisal – check it out – I just made that word up. Pretty good, right? Seasonability…) So as I’m wearing last-year’s swimsuit in the 99-degree-practically-autumn Texas weather, and wondering if maybe I should go buy some gloves “just to have them,” at least I can be content in knowing that “back to school” no longer applies to me. My lunchtime is now MY lunchtime.

And I can go to the library whenever I feel like it, thank you very much…