Tuesday, October 2, 2007

No Use Cryin'...


In the school cafeteria, students come to lunch by grade, every ten minutes. In the few moments in between serving each class, I try to help the lunch monitor clean the tables and floor. (I have found that little kids have a habit of leaving garbage under the tables, whereas older children leave garbage on the tables, not even attempting to clean up after themselves.)
Today, when I was out among the tables, I noticed some strawberry milk spilt all over the floor. As you may have guessed, we have spills such as this virtually every day. No Problem. I just grabbed the mop and put up a "caution, wet floor" sign. But as I was finishing up, a little brown-haired girl with bright eyes said to me in her first-grader voice, "Thank you, Lunch Lady!" I couldn't help but get a funny grin on my face when I told her "You're welcome."
I don't know if the milk was even hers, but I appreciate that she appreciates. It also makes me happy to report that now I have kids of my own to blog about- more than three hundred fifty of them. Like the little boy that was amazed at a tiny banana that he picked as his fruit today. he put it up to his cheek like a telephone and said, "this is the littlest banana phone I have ever talked in to." I quickly grabbed another banana and put it up to my cheek. "What will you have for lunch today?" I asked him. He was bewildered for only a moment by the grown-up playing games with him, but quickly recovered and announced, "I'm having chili!"
"Good," I smiled, and hung up.
I also tried to convince an eighth-grader that we were installing hidden cameras in the cafeteria, and she had better tell her friends that we are going to catch those students that leave their trash on the tables. I hope that it starts rumors that go around the whole school and we'll end up with a spic-and-span lunchroom everyday.
Well, here's to dreaming. Goodnight kids.

-Anna

1 comment:

hosander said...

yay! I love anna's blog. and stories about messy children! yay!