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THE LUNCH LADY
By
Rick Brown
"Did ya'll see the Lunch Lady today?" Tiebold asked. "She look bad to me."
"She
is bad, Tiebold," Shwana said. "Look what she gave me. Next to nothing.
There's so little food on this tray they wouldn't even bother to wash
it off."
The kids were sitting in the school lunch room on a
Friday. If the meals were bad enough to start with, they were always
worse on Friday when nobody really cared about anything.
"The
other day," Jeffy said, "I heard Angela say hello to her and you know
what that Lunch Lady said? Nothing. I mean her lips didn't even move.
She so mean.”
“Any fool can tell she hates all kids,” Shwana said.
“Go on, girl,” Tiebold added. “Ya’ll see how she treats the teachers?
No different. That lady hates everybody the same. I never seen nobody
so nasty in all my days.”
“Who’s nasty?”
“Hey, Mr. Jenners,” Tiebold said.
“You want to know about nasty, that’s me. I’m the nastiest teacher at
Longview Middle School and don’t you forget it, Tiebold.”
“We’re talking about the Lunch Lady, Mr. Jenners.”
“Ooo, now she really is nasty,” he said.
“You’re not nasty, Mr.
Jenners,” Shwana said. “You the coolest teacher here.”
“What kind of turkey do you think I am?” he asked. “She must be worried
about that quiz by the way she’s trying to butter me up.”
“Look
what I get for lunch, Mr. Jenners,” Shwana said. “Looks like they got
it out of a cat box and there ain’t hardly nothing there. I’d like
about to starve if I didn’t bring me something from home.”
“Well look on the bright side, Shwana. I’ve lost ten pounds in the last
two months and I’ve got the Lunch Lady to thank for that. If they do
have something worth eating, she’s so nasty I hardly want to go through
the line.”
“Isn’t there something we can do, Mr. Jenners?” Jeffy asked.
“Hm. You know, I think you might have something there. Seems to me—and
I may have this wrong—but what the Lunch Lady needs is a little special
attention.”
“Like from a mean dog?” Tiebold asked.
“No,” Mr. Jenners said. “You see, I’ll just bet she goes through life
being nasty to people and they’re nasty right back to her, you know
what I mean? We need to break that cycle. We need her to see us as real
humans. She needs to be treated like a queen. We need to show her how
we have fun, laugh and treat each other with respect.”
“You dreaming, Mr. Jenners,” Shwana said.
“No, I think he’s right,”
Tiebold agreed. “I mean, we don’t even know her name. We
don’t know nothing about her.”
“’Cept she’s evil,”
Shwana said, “and she don’t give you next to nothing to
eat.”
Tiebold leaned back in his chair.
“I never heard her laugh or nothing,” he said. “Everybody need to laugh
now and then. Like Ms. Weber says, it’s good for ya’ll soul.”
“Providing she got a soul,” Shwana said.
“Let’s maker her laugh, people,” Jeffy suggested. “Let’s do something
to lighten her load and make her laugh. It shouldn’t be that hard. I’m
laughing at Tiebold all the time.”
“That’s a great idea,
Jeffy,” Mr. Jenners said. “I like that one. There’s something so
universal about laughter. It includes people. Did you know humans are
the only animals that can laugh?”
“Don’t make me laugh,” Shwana said. “But seriously, how we gonna do it?”
“Leave that up to me,” Tiebold said. “I think I can do it. We’ll have
that Lunch Lady cracking a smile and hooting with laughter before you
know it, ok?”
The next day, the plan was in motion. Mr. Jenners
made sure he was in the lunch room because he wanted to see what his
favorite students were going to do. Tiebold had a plan. It was simple
and it involved a couple jokes which Shwana naturally thought where
hopelessly lame.
“Tiebold, what you thinking, boy?” Shwana said
when she learned of the plan. “I mean, you’re supposed to be funny. You
tell her those jokes and she ain’t gonna do nothing besides stare at
you like you some kind of a fence post.”
“Those are the
funniest jokes I know,” Tiebold said. “Shwana, you wouldn’t know a joke
if it sat on your head and did a boogie dance. Just watch me.”
After the students had all gotten their food and the line had
disappeared, Tiebold made his way back to the Lunch Lady. She was busy
sorting tickets with her usual blank expression on her face. From the
table, the others watched at Tiebold approached the Lunch Lady. He said
something and she looked directly at him. He said something else and
her expression didn’t change at all. Then Tiebold said launched into a
rather long speech complete with hand gestures and wild facial
expressions. But the Lunch Lady just stared at him without a hint of
interest or amusement.
Finally Tiebold motioned towards the
casserole on the lunch line and the Lunch Lady reached over and slapped
a heaping spoonful on his plate. His friends could see him smile weakly
at the Lunch Lady but she neither smiled for said anything as Tiebold
walked away.
About halfway between the serving area and the
table, Tiebold turned around to look at the Lunch Lady one more time.
It was at this point that he stepped on greasy spot on the floor where
a student had dropped a glob of casserole. If Tiebold hadn’t turned to
look, he could have recovered nicely with just a stumble. Instead, his
foot slid out in front of him and his other foot was suddenly in the
air and Tiebold was on his backside on the floor, now facing the Lunch
Lady. But it was the tuna casserole that did it. It covered his hair
and dripped down onto his face like a bucket of gray paint.
For
some reason, this tickled the Lunch Lady. Everyone else in the
cafeteria was polite enough not to laugh or take much notice of
Tiebold. It was embarrassing enough and everybody had done something
stupid like that before. They knew better than to laugh at something
like that.
Not the Lunch Lady. And here is what got everybody’s
attention: the next sound that filled the lunch room. It was the Lunch Lady’s laugh. It sounded like a choking hyena.
And it kept going. It just didn’t seem to stop. All the sudden
everybody realized why the Lunch Lady was always so somber. That, in
combination with Tiebold’s fall, was too much. The whole place erupted
with laughter which fed back and forth in waves, all lead by the Lunch
Lady’s amazing laugh.
Now, it wouldn’t be exactly honest to say
that the Lunch Lady was a different person after that. She still didn’t
laugh. But each time Tiebold came through the lunch line, he could
count on seeing her smile broadly at him and the memory of that tuna
casserole.
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