Lunch Date

little kid and I went and had lunch with Big Kid on Friday. Like the kick ass mom that I am, I brought McDonalds. This drew crowds of envious kids who came by one by one to say, "So Big Kid, is this your mom?" and shuffle their feet awkwardly as they coveted Big Kid's Happy Meal.

He sat tall and proud, introducing me to those who came over and pointing out those who didn't. I saw Hot Sally. She sat at a table across from us, blond ponytail flipped up at the end, blue satin headband resting behind her bangs, white colored button up shirt with a pink v-neck cardigan over it with her lunch items set out prissily in front of her.

"Oh, she's cute!" I said when Big Kid pointed her out.

"She's always cute, mom. Ebery single day she's cute like dat. She has a pink and purple skirt dat is her favorite and I fink she looks beautiful in it."

She's the perfect Sally. If central casting needed a first grader for a character named Sally, they would be delighted to find this Sally.

Lunch was at the alarming time of 10:50 a.m. On the weekends, we eat breakfast around 10-10:30. I realized that Big Kid eats at 7:30, 10:50, school snack at 2, hungry for a snack after school around 4:30 and dinner around 6:30. We've got these kids trained to eat every 3 hours, often giving them no more than 15 minutes to do so. And we wonder why most of society grows up to be fat adults with weird eating habits? Lunch time is 15 minutes long--the kids who don't bring their lunch have about 8 minutes to eat. Kindergartners and first graders cannot eat a full meal in 8 minutes, especially if they are free to talk to friends and dawdle around. I was on the whole table's ass to eat, eat, eat--you have 4 minutes left, were you planning on eating anything?

I am fascinated by the differences between Big Kid's old school and new school. Old school is older and has more lower-income students. The new school is a couple of years old and has a high tax base.

The new school has an organic co-op as a fundraiser, an organic garden for their lunch room, serves heaping lunch serving sizes, is very fun/play-oriented, relaxed about parents being on school grounds/picking up their child, kids have 2 recesses a day, no uniform policy, teacher wants me to call her by her first name, no chanting of sayings or boot-camp style mind control techniques, and has a buttload of books in each class room and top quality supplies that weren't on our supply lists, plays classical music instead of bells or alarms.

When I pointed out how nice the music was, Big Kid said, "I heard Four Seasons and Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 before. I tried to tell da udder kids da song names but dey kept sayin', 'No dat's just da lunch bell' or 'No, dat means it is time to go home.' I'm finkin' it's 'cuz dey have never been in a school dat has bells. Dey fink da music is a bell! I do try to tell 'em."

I also find it interesting that several kids in Big Kid's class have gluten allergies. No allergies in the entire Kindergarten of the old school. That could be a coincidence, but it is one of the many differences between the poor school/rich school, old school/new school.

I like the new school way better, although according to Big Kid, they spend all day playing and having fun. I'm slightly concerned about this, but it's only been 2 weeks and as we all know, he has a way of twisting the facts so maybe that's just his interpretation.