Daily Breeze, April 2005
LUNCH BE A LADY
Our adventurer stirs the pot at local middle school
BY COREY LEVITAN
PHOTOS BY BRAD GRAVERSON/DAILY BREEZE
"I usually get two things -- a burrito AND a chili dog," says the next boy on line.
I've been warned about this con. Each student at
Adams Middle School in Redondo Beach receives a choice of one of the following
for lunch: 1) chicken burrito; 2) chili dog; 3) chicken sandwich; 4) nachos
and cheese; 5) peanut butter and jelly; 6) yogurt; or 7) salad.
There's always one wise guy who requests more than one.
"They'll try it as soon as they see a new lunch lady," said Kathy Reynolds, a 19-year veteran of this cafeteria and my mentor for this adventure.
The new lunch lady is me.
"You should be ashamed of yourself, young man!" I snap.
My voice blends Mike Myers' coffee talk lady from "Saturday Night Live" with my mom from Long Island, who used to summon me for dinner off the street with one humiliating syllable too many: "Coo-wah-ree!"
Adams kindly agreed to let me serve food in its cafeteria. Of course, I left out one little detail. For an adventure column, a lunch "man" felt like a cop-out.
Jessica from Aardvarks in Hermosa Beach did my makeup and lent me a red pageboy wig, grandma-style glasses and an institutional green dress. (The pantyhose, bra and flats came from my special dresser drawer at home.)
This morning, I shaved my sideburns, hands and arms (but not my nose hair) for realism.
I have no idea whether I'll be allowed anywhere near children looking like this. School administrators are highly straitlaced as a rule. And just getting permission to work at Adams as a member of my given sex required weeks of negotiating, then fingerprinting and a TB test.
My first few steps on campus aren't promising. Security is immediately summoned by the receptionist in the principal's office.
"It's a man," the guard says into his walkie-talkie, quietly so, he thinks, I can't hear.
I introduce myself as Mrs. Parvis. She was our head lunch lady back at Boardman Junior High School in Oceanside, Long Island. About 250 lbs. yet distinctly non-jolly, Mrs. Parvis worked the tray-return window like a baby bird when mom brings the worms. Any untouched food coming back on a tray was hers.
"These are still perfectly good!" she would scold you with a mouth full of your own string beans. (P.S. Sometimes didn't care if the food was touched.)
Adam Sandler's 1994 song "Lunch Lady Land" was
very Mrs. Parvis: "Well, I wear this net on my head/'Cause my red hair is
fallin' out./I wear these brown orthopedic shoes/'Cause I got a bad case of
the gout./I know you want seconds on the corn dogs/But there's no reason to
shout."
If Adam Sandler knew Mrs. Parvis, he would have mentioned her by name. The line right after could have gone: "something-something-something starve us."
After clearance from Adams principal Karen Westberg, the guard escorts me to the cafeteria, which is to receive its first wave of starving students in 15 minutes.
I'm greeted by some giggling from the lunch crew, a couple of politically correct non-reactions (in case this is how I actually intend to look) and one distinct "Dios mio!"
"I think there was something you forgot to tell us," Westberg says, after rushing here from her office.
Luckily for me, a good sense of humor prevails, because the only thing more humiliating than cross-dressing for an adventure is doing it for an adventure that doesn’t take place.
I'll be handling Reynolds' duties today, as she coaches behind me. She supplies me with plastic gloves, then ties an official school apron around my waist. It's emblazoned with the logo for Redondo Beach's Child Nutrition Services, but I can't read it over my humongous chest.
"Hmm, I can read MY apron," Reynolds says, disappointed, as she looks down at her own.
Much has changed since Mrs. Parvis'
day. Gone are Salisbury steak and those ladlefuls of mystery sauce. Most of
today's
entrees are pre-made in some factory, shrink-wrapped and kept warm in a tray
above hot water. I'm to serve each with a handful of tater tots. When the tots run
out, there are more in an oven back in the kitchen.
Another change in the modern cafeteria is that trays are no longer brought back by the students. Since they're Styrofoam, they just go in the trash.
Mrs. Parvis would not have approved.
Finally, computers tick off used lunch passes, so kids can't sneak back for seconds.
"Oh, we bust them all the time," says cashier Teri Reed, adding that some hungry hoodlums go as far as wielding unused passes from their friends.
"They'll change their shirt and their glasses to try and disguise themselves," Reed says. "But we get 'em -- especially if they're a Britney and it's a guy."
Yes, they're fairly good at distinguishing girls from guys at Adams Middle School.
"Jesus!" screams a blonde girl near the head of line now streaming in. Her friends stare at me, too, smiling and slapping their faces. They know SOMETHING is up, although they have no idea what.
"Chicken patty," says a boy with a red shirt who refuses to look up at me.
"Are those balloons?" another girl inquires.
I ignore the question, but this student
certainly knows her protrusions. They are balloons. Punch-bowl size, too. Mrs. Parvis basically had three heads, two covered up by her shirt. I could barely
get my car seat far enough back to drive here from Aardvarks.
"That THING over there is SICK!" another boy confides to operations manager Chris Chirco, who tells me later. "I'm never eating in this cafeteria again!"
Once word spreads about the new lunch lady, just about the entire Adams teaching staff swings by. Two women don't even pretend to get in line for food; they just prop themselves against the wall and laugh.
"Take a picture!" I yell. "It'll last longer!"
When the snickering women refuse to simmer down, I blow the whistle I brought, causing my co-workers to shudder.
"We have to get Kathy one of those," Reed says.
Mrs. Parvis liked her whistle. She blew it four inches from your eardrum if she caught you playing with your food -- much less throwing it at Mark Berger because he shouted your name then quickly turned the opposite way when you tried to see who called you.
And if Mrs. Parvis nailed you exiting the cafeteria without bringing back your tray, trust me, you only wished she used her whistle.
"That's an awfully large scoop," Reynolds says, criticizing my tater-tot methodology. She senses impending disaster, but continues to let me heap the squishy morsels high.
"And NO SNACKIES WHILE SERVING!" she adds, her finger pointing wildly after a stray tater somehow finds its way into my mouth.
"May I help you, young man?" I ask the next eighth-grade boy. He remains silent for about 20 seconds, as though holding something back, before ordering a chili dog.
My sense that shenanigans are afoot is correct. Following my tater overload, the troublemaker lets out a "Thanks, man -- I mean ma'am!"
Reed rushes to my defense.
"Hey, that's not nice!" she admonishes the boy, who is high-fiving his friend.
The tots in line wind down along with the tots in the tray. I go to retrieve the last batch of browned potatoes from the oven, but -- like my dignity by this point -- it has vanished. Maria Vargas, the lunch lady manning the other side of the cafeteria, has been taking them for her line, too.
"Sorry, we're out of tater tots!" Reynolds announces to the kids still waiting in our line. A collective moan is emitted.
The guilt is excruciating. Tots are missing, and it's entirely my fault. Face after disappointed face now stares at the empty metal tot tray (after first staring at my boobs).
I try "borrowing" tots from Vargas, but she will have none of this. She knows proper tot portions. Why should her line pay for my mistake?
Thinking fast, Reynolds locates a box of airplane-size pretzel bags.
"You have to improvise on this job," she tells me.
But the faces are only slightly less disappointed. Tots are what make the school meal; this much hasn't changed in 25 years.
"Get closer to the front of the line next time!" Reynolds tells the kids. "You snooze, you lose!"
The spirit of Mrs. Parvis lives after all.