Kids Just Wanna Have Lunch

[wildernesse]

Originally Posted by Janet

Just to get this out of the way, what the fuck does Detroit have to do with any of this? I know what it means when Canadians say "getting as bad as Detroit" whenever there's a crime in Toronto. But this is completely without context for me. What boogie man is Detroit playing here?

I don't think that's true. I think a whole lot of people in the U.S. at this time have never been actually hungry. And if they were, it was because they were dieting and chose to be. I doubt these people have any experience with true hunger and that's part of the reason for their callousness. The other 90% is just pure, unadulterated assholery, though.

Detroit = black people. See what happens when they run things? That is the line of thinking there.

[Janet]

I was afraid of that. I don't know if I posted about this, but a couple weeks ago I was at my sister's cottage and her husband was saying such a load of dog-whistle racist bullshit about Detroit that I had to leave the room to avoid lunging at him. I'm less tolerant of that lately not just because I've heard that my whole life, but also because I'm suffering the effects. I know that racism, transmuted into "people in the cities don't deserve to have nice things" is one of the big reasons it's been so hard to get people to donate money to the library. It's also why our property values aren't going up and I'm getting screwed over by the emergency manager.

It sucks to watch it happen and it sucks to live it and I'm right with you, LisaRea, on wanting to hurt some people. I think we are a lot alike in our misanthropy, although I don't really fight mine. People suck, people in large groups suck absolutely. That's kind of my motto.

[Dingfod]

Re: Using Detroit like it's something bad: Worked for Robocop.

[Ensign Steve]

Originally Posted by wildernesse

Guys. Guys. You're not from Georgia, but let me tell you that Richmond County is where the URBAN people are and Columbia County (next door) is the suburbs. So it's less about hungry children and more about those URBAN (wink, wink) people getting stuff for free again from their URBAN president.

I'm not from Georgia, but I lived in Richmond County, where the Army base is. All the high-ranked civilians and retirees lived in Columbia County, where the Augusta golf place is. The county line splits the city and the difference is stark.

The cool part, though, was that our sales tax was 5.0% compared with their 7.25%, so Columbia County people would spend their money in our malls, which kept them nice. Also my civilian friend came with me for moral support when I bought my car in Atlanta and they base the sales tax on your home county and she was like, no fair!

[Megatron]

Fucking hell, now those worthless poors want their children to EAT too? Jesus christ, next thing you know they'll want fucking health care!

[Qingdai]

So New Jersey and Philadelphia hate kids, wait no. "Urban" kids.

District: No Money In Lunch Account, No 'Humanitarian Meal' - Philadelphia News, Weather and Sports from WTXF FOX 29
Racism, not just for the South.

[Megatron]

Listen, now. We just can't afford to feed all those ni-..."URBAN" people. We're still making payments on our beach resorts!

[Dingfod]

This just shows that Republicans really do only care about you before you are born.

[Adam]

Now, now, I think these sociopaths make some good points. What kind of lesson are we teaching these children by just GIVING them food that that didn't even have to work for? I'm sure their own children are up at 5am every morning, putting in a few hours honest labor before school to pay for their food.

[LadyShea]

I dunno what the culture is at Kiddo's school because he doesn't seem to know or to care. He takes his lunch because he takes his lunch because that's what I send him with. I think he has bought lunch 3 times in 3 years (once because I simply forgot to make his lunch one morning).

Now I do know, as an informed parent, that a large percentage (a majority in fact) of our kids qualify for free or reduced breakfast and lunch. I know that quite a few kids get there for breakfast...mostly for childcare purposes so the parents can go to work. I really don't think there is much by way of what is cool. Except that one kid told Kiddo that his mom must be crazy for sending him V8 in his lunch. He discussed it with me because he didn't know quite how to feel about it. He was worried that I might be mad or hurt. I explained to him that he likes V8! I reminded him that I, personally, hate that shit but he loves it. And it's better for him than other packaged drinks. I also told him that I didn't care one bit what some 6 year old thought of me.

So, anyway yeah. No point or anything, just talking

Originally Posted by lisarea

I went to a lot of different schools as a kid, and at least at the time, the culture was totally different in different places. So at one school, lunchboxes were an important social marker, so most of us brought lunch from home. At other ones, only dorks carried their lunch around, so kids would get the school lunches. The private school didn't have a cafeteria, but a few kids went to the one at the Catholic school we shared a campus with. At the high school I went to in 9th grade, the jocks owned the cafeteria pretty openly, so almost nobody else even went in there; and everyone else either left campus to eat or got chips and sodas from the vending machines and ate them while walking around. At the open school for hippies and other juvenile delinquents I went to after that, they had this weird little cafeteria thing with one full time employee and student helpers. It was called "Munchies," and it was vegetarian, and only the hippies ate there. The rest of us would go into town and go to restaurants. (I had lunch with John Hinckley sometimes when I went there. BOOM! NAMEDROP!)

(Unfortunately, my son was always an oddly self-possessed child, so I can't generalize his experiences at all. He's always just done whatever he wanted on the assumption that whatever he did was automatically cool.)

Generally, I think schools in poorer districts tend to have a culture where everyone gets the school lunches, but once you get into mostly middle class areas, it's dictated by the specific culture at that school.

[lisarea]

The Little Muffin -> < Kiddo

V8 is TLM's favorite to this day, and he has been taunted about that recently, as an adult, by one of his employees, and he remains as incredulous as he was as a kid. He was almost too self-confident as a kid sometimes, really, like he bordered on being sort of cocky and dismissive at times, and we had to work on that.

When he was little, I almost never gave him junk food at all. I just figured there was no good reason to introduce him to that sort of thing myself, so "soda" meant mineral water, and he'd get vegetables as snacks and things like that, and his cockiness made him fairly resistant to taunting. At his one elementary school, they had regular school lunches, and a few alternatives, including Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, (yes, in an elementary school cafeteria), or a chef salad. At a parent teacher conference once, I was informed that the lunch staff made exactly one chef salad every day, for my son, because he's the only one who ever got that. When people tried to make fun of him, he'd be like, "Are you stupid? It's a salad with meat and cheese in it! That's the best possible food!"

One time, when he was in high school, a friend of mine came over laughing and said, "Your son is walking down the street eating a giant bag of snow peas like it's popcorn," and I was all UGH SNOW PEA HOG THOSE WERE FOR EVERYONE.

You know that scene in The Brother From Another Planet, where The Brother is walking down the street eating a head of lettuce (maybe cabbage) like an apple? That's The Little Muffin.

I'm just talking too.

[Ensign Steve]

Originally Posted by lisarea

The Little Muffin

V8
"soda" meant mineral water
vegetables as snacks
exactly one chef salad every day
a giant bag of snow peas like it's popcorn

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

I used to get that a lot, In a restaurant I would order a salad and put Olive Oil and grated cheese on it. I'm not over weight and it really puzzled people. The only time I taste salad dressing is when my wife gets something good and offers me a taste.

[ceptimus]

BBC News - All infants in England to get free school lunches

[erimir]

Brits are weird. Schoolchildren aren't infants.

[ceptimus]

Initially, the free meals are only for the first two 'reception' years - when the kids are aged about 5 or 6.

In the UK it's normal to call the schools for children aged roughly 5 to 8 years, 'infant schools'; the schools for kids aged roughly 8 to 11 are called 'junior schools'; and the schools for kids aged 12 to 16 or so are called 'secondary schools', 'comprehensive schools' or, rarely nowadays, 'grammar schools'.

The places some kids aged 3 or 4 go to are called 'nursery schools' or just 'nurseries'.

[LadyShea]

School Sends Low-Income Child Home Wearing 'Lunch Money Please' Sticker | Americans Against the Tea Party

However, it must be asked whether the school’s action can be excused. Is it right to humiliate a child–to expose his family’s financial situation–over food? We must ask ourselves what we have become as a nation, when schools are throwing away a child’s lunch if he or she does not have the money, and choosing to humiliate children who do not stem from affluence. When we won’t feed a hungry child, can we call ourselves civilized?

[Kael]

Jesus fucking Christ. I'd lose my shit all over that school. Fucking assholes.