sugar cereal

I don’t know about you, but until recently, the words “lunch lady” conjured less than pleasant memories of crabby women in hairnets glopping mystery meat and mashed potatoes onto plastic trays with ice cream scoops. Had I taken a moment to consider their point of view, I suppose I might have realized how annoying it would be to dish out food, day after day, to disrespectful kids yelling “ewwww, gross!” I’m ashamed to admit that this level of empathy was beyond me in my elementary school years. I was too busy yelling “ewwww, gross!”

It'd be hard to make the case that my dad was a health food nut. Yes, we avoided sugar cereals. Yes, we tended to cook homemade dinners. Yes, we drank seltzer (often in glass bottles from from the seltzer guy) instead of soda (my friends still give me a hard time, but hey, we were in New York). One year, my dad even traded coffee for Postum.