Right now I am eating a grilled cheese sandwich. In the morning. At school. On Friday. Friday is grilled cheese for breakfast day. For adults. For kids. For anyone who is hungry. Kids get off the bus, grab a sandwich and eat the cheesy goodness then go out to play.
Other days it is oatmeal. Served from a giant vat, creamy and delicious. A small spoonful of brown sugar or raisins and you have a hot breakfast on a rainy morning. Another day might be muffins, fresh from the oven making the whole school smell delicious for hours. More often it is cereal, Cheerios, Chex or Raisin Bran.
I love our breakfast program. Run strictly on donations and the infinite energy one committed and amazing woman, there is not paperwork to fill out, no applications for Federal Free and Reduced lunch programs – the security of knowing…. if you are hungry? You eat.
I look at these little kids and think, that smell, that Friday cheesy smell is going to be with them their entire lives. Someday, when they think of elementary school, they will think of that.
When I think of elementary school, I think of the dusty smell of tempera paint, the sticky sweet smell of paste that was applied with a brush, and the smell from the kitchen. Our school had a kitchen. It had sweet lunch ladies in hair nets who cooked things like mashed potatoes and peas and baked ranger cookies. When you were in sixth grade, you got to be a kitchen helper!
It is Friday, I pour myself an extra cup of coffee, nibble at my sandwich, shamelessly peeling away the crusts and I am ready for my day. And I guess that is how the kids feel too. And that my friends is a good thing!
(Prompt words – Someday, committed, security, finite)
bethlovesblue 
Oh, the memories that come flooding back! The sense of smell, even when we lose it, stays in our memories forever. Now and then the hot lunch they gave us at school was just something to still the rumbly tummy, but most of the time it was surprisingly good. We always knew what we were having before we started toward the cafeteria. The aromas pulled us to lunch, and your post gave me that same sense of nostalgia.
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I always defend our lunch program – it is surprisingly good when you think of what they have to work with, but it is nothing compared to what lunches were like in my day, when they were cooked fresh on site. Not packed in factory kitchen somewhere and kept warm for hours.
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Exactly. I loved it, on macaroni and cheese day, if I got some of the crusty corner 🙂
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