School Lunch

Walking into High School in the morning I was always pleased by the smell of the school cafeteria preparing for the onslaught of complaining teenagers who probably really enjoyed it. I didn't share my thoughts at the time. I had a budding social career firmly on the rise and knew better. But in my heart I relished the time when I could use contrived exemptions to excuse myself from going out and plant myself in the lunchroom and eat potato triangles and cheap salisbury steak. I especially enjoyed accepting leftovers from others like miniature cartoned milk and trashy peanut butter, chocolate bars that left a chalky residue. You could buy an extra one for a quarter. Occasionally I would shamelessly bum the money convinced that I was charming if I was blatant. But it didn't matter. I had my peanut butter bar.

Back to Reality

In the cold and early January mornings on the train from West Chester County there is a group of Union workers who board at Pelham station with their hats and coffee and they sit separate from each other and gesticulate crudely of their private lives and unfaithful desires, feigning amazement at the stories in the free paper for conversation sake and they have no awkward silence between them. And they sit there with their big thumbs and fresh hair like they've been up for hours and I cuddle the wall and watch, not with envy or admiration but for entertainment.