Lunch Shaming

Just when I thought I’d heard everything, I read this week in the Sacramento Bee that there is a thing called “lunch shaming.”  This can take a number of forms, but it involves kids, including little ones in first and second grade, who come to school without a lunch or any money to buy one.  What the school does about this situation varies greatly from one district to another.

Some schools advance the kid the money needed to buy lunch.  Others let the kid go hungry.  Apparently, however, many schools take a middle road in which they provide kids in this predicament with a “basic lunch” such as a cheese sandwich.

The shaming comes in when kids are embarrassed when they don’t get the same hot lunch that their peers are eating but instead are stuck with a bland alternative lunch.  Most of the class may be enjoying pizza and salad, but the hapless kid with no lunch money is given some cheese sticks and crackers or a cheese sandwich.  Some school districts have elected to stop this practice and let the kid have the regular hot lunch.  And here in California, a bill has now been introduced in the state legislature prohibiting schools from providing moneyless students with an alternative lunch.

Interestingly, the Bee article failed to mention the shaming that occurs when a poor kid brings his lunch from home, which turns out to be something sparse — such as a plain cheese sandwich.  When I was in school, eons ago, lots of kids faced this situation and no one thought anything about it.  Of course, the school can’t do anything about that because it has no control of parents who send their kids to school with a crappy lunch.  What they do have control over is what they give those kids who come to school with no lunch at all.  Gee, if I had known about this back in the day, I may have conveniently forgotten to take my brown bag sandwich on a day when the school lunch menu showed something good was being served.

Apparently, the shaming gets worse.  Schools have taken a variety of draconian measures to collect lunch money from parents who fail to load money onto their children’s accounts.  These range from sending letters home with the kid to posting lists on the wall to stamping a kid’s arm with the words “Lunch Money.”

To their credit, many school districts have given up on such tactics in favor of contacting the parent directly via email or phone calls.

So what is causing kids to arrive at school without any lunch or money?  Many parents, of course, are very poor, qualifying their kids for free breakfast and lunch.  The problem is that parents forget to fill out the paperwork necessary for their kids to get on the program.  My guess is that some parents have other things on their minds (like surviving another month) and that others just don’t give a darn.  Then there are those parents who don’t read very well and are unlikely to understand any paperwork set in front of them.

An aspect of this story that particularly fascinated me is the price of a school lunch.  When I was a kid, it was 40 cents.  If we brought a lunch from home, we could buy a half-pint of milk to go with it for four cents.  My parents would keep a penny cup on the dresser in their bedroom, from which we were expected to remember to extract the four pennies necessary to buy milk.  Today, however, the typical price of a school lunch is $2.75.  This is almost a sevenfold increase over the intervening decades.  I can understand parents being unable or unwilling to pay 55 to 60 dollars per month for their kids’ lunches.

So what should the schools do about this situation?  Many say that kids should not be punished for the shortcomings of their parents.  While not depriving kids of food just because their parents make poor choices resonates with me on a visceral level, ultimately the sins of the parents are always visited upon the sons.  Kids cannot be taken away from their parents just because they happened to be born into poor families.  So one way or the other, the kids are the ones who suffer.

I propose that the answer to the “lunch shaming” problem is to provide all schoolkids with free breakfast and lunch.  The feds, state and local governments, and the school districts will have to work out the fiscal arrangements needed to pay for this.  Neither the kids nor the teachers nor the school administrators should ever have to be concerned about whether a student will end up with an inferior lunch or no lunch at all.

As for those who would criticize my “welfare state” attitude, I say hands off the innocents.  Our youngest Americans are our future.  Jeopardizing the future of our nation by tolerating kids who are not prepared to learn because they have nothing to eat is simply unacceptable in the wealthiest nation on earth.

 

10 Reasons a Land Line is Better than a Cell Phone

10. A land line has retro cool cachet. (I’m particularly fond of the working 1980 baby blue dial phone on the wall of my parents’ garage.) Plus, when your children roll their eyes at you, you’ll actually know why.

9. A land line gets you a listing in the local phone directory. (Don’t say “What’s that?” I might cry.)  If you prefer a cell phone because it lets you go incognito, you can save some money by just buying a pair of dark glasses.  Say, who exactly are you hiding from anyway?

8. A land line lets you experience the excitement of seeing the message light flashing on your answering machine when you walk in the door.

7. A land line keeps it real. A land line does not make you think you’re more important than you are. Unless you’re a doctor or a drug dealer, it can wait til you get home.  (And don’t give me a load of bull about having to keep in touch with your kids at all times.  We disconnected Baby Boomers survived childhood and adolescence just fine without being kidnapped.)

6. You never have to remember to set your land line on “silent.” After all, a land line does not embarrass you by ringing while you’re in an important meeting at work. Or in church.  Or at a funeral.

5. A land line is purely functional. It is designed to do exactly one thing and it does it well. Your land line does not tempt you to fritter away precious hours of your life playing Farm Town, Words with Friends and Angry Birds.

4. In an emergency, you can call 911 from your land line and the dispatcher will know exactly where you are. If you try this with a cell phone when you are out and about, you’d better know the names of the nearest cross streets if you expect to get any help. And if your idea of stating your location is “I’m at Steph’s boyfriend’s house, I don’t know the address here, hellllpppp!”, you’d better hope that the dispatcher’s little radar thingy is good enough to locate you in the five minutes you have left in which to revive Steph’s boyfriend. (Expect a bill for that search and rescue helicopter that you hear whirring overhead.)

3. A land line does not cut out when you hit a “dead spot.” A land line never displays the message “Call Failed.”

2. A land line always has a dial tone and never displays the message “no service” when you are desperately in need of making a call.

And the #1 reason that a land line is better than a cell phone:

1. A land line never has to be charged. On the other hand, when your cell phone runs out of juice, it makes a lovely paperweight.

The Scrabble Zone

The 2017 Great American Escape

SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS

It is difficult to adequately explain the intensity of a five-day Scrabble tournament to one who has never experienced it.  Yes, it is a grind to play seven or eight games per day for days in a row.  And you can’t help but notice the yawns and drooping expressions on the faces of the competitors when the last round of the day is underway and it’s close to 6 p.m.  But we always come back for more, spending thousands of dollars and our precious annual vacation time to fly and drive around the country to do it again.  As one of my opponents here at Word Cup 7 explains, “it’s like heroin to the vein.”

Merry Scrabble addicts all are we, counting the days until the next tournament, eagerly anticipating the next fix.

Scrabble truly is an all-ages game, as is borne out by the wide range of players here.  Over the last few days, for example, I have been soundly trounced by a boy who is on his summer vacation after having finished seventh grade, as well as by a very old lady who has to be close to age 90.  The boy, who has won prize after prize here, tells me that he practices with his mom’s boyfriend.  Then he kills me by over 150 points.  The old lady tells me that winning or losing doesn’t much matter to her and that she’s just glad to still be here and able to play.  Then she puts her word prowess on display and proceeds to beat me to pieces.

And we come from all over.  The tournament director drove here from Iowa, while the Minneapolis-St. Paul area is well represented by a contingent that traveled from Minnesota.  There are players here from Arizona and Florida and Oregon.  I am one of five Californians who made it out to New England for this event.

The local newspaper and TV station show up with cameras to shoot video and stills and interview some of the players.  The mayor sends a representative with a proclamation.  It is a big deal locally.

Many of my fellow Scrabblers have never been to Springfield before, but to me it is something of a homecoming.  I lived here for three years while attending law school back in the 1980s.  I am pleased to discover that a few of the eateries that I so enjoyed back then are still around and thriving decades later, serving new generations of students.

In many respects, however, it makes no difference what city we’re in when we are caught up in the excitement of the game.  When we shake hands and shake our tile bags, announce our scores and hit our clocks, it’s as if we’re lost in another world.

“Hey, did you hear that Trump fired Scaramucci after eleven days?” one of my fellow players announces between games.  Indeed, I had not.  Accustomed as I am to reading three or four newspapers online each day, I suspend my usual habits when attending a Scrabble tournament.  For here, under the crystal chandeliers in the grand ballroom of a big hotel, the world goes away for a while.  All that matters is finding that next big play for 90 points, chasing after the elusive triple-triple and notching up another win on our tally sheets.

We have entered the Scrabble zone.