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Post by zoar3 on May 16, 2010 20:09:44 GMT -5
I just re-read Logan Likes Mary Anne for the umpteenth time and got to thinking about lunch at SMS. Other than the weirdness of each grade eating separately that is, I had never truly realized how much of the BSC Members lunch probably gets thrown out every day and the message that may have sent some readers.
This is the book where MA announces that she and Kristy used to bring their lunch but decided doing so was too babyish this year, now that they are in 8th Grade and everything. Okay. Putting that logic or lack thereof aside, for the remainder of their 13 years as 8th Graders, aside from Dawn who brings her lunch and sometimes Stacey who purchases a sandwich, it strikes me that the rest of the club members bought the hot lunch 5 days a week. They bought it. Kristy "makes a gross food joke" about the "meal." Secretly the others agree with Kristy though they don't care for her remarks. My point is, other than maybe a couple token bites, sounded like 95%+ of all those lunches got dumped, un-eaten. How, exactly is throwing away both food and money, not to mention, starving until getting home in the afternoon better or more mature than bringing a lunch?
Yes food has always been an issue of different sorts for me. I just don't get how especially Kristy, would do this day after day? Didn't Jessi tell us in "Jessi's Gold Medal" how famished she was when her lunch hour was switched to later, so she could swim? They had to have been hungry. Unless despite Mary Anne's protests (on Dawn's behalf), Kristy and company all gorged themselves on Fudgesicles when the hot lunch was "gross."
Thoughts? Yes, I have read/thought about these books way too much. ;D
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Post by murderedmymuse on May 16, 2010 23:42:54 GMT -5
Yeah, it's funny, until you mentioned it I never gave any thought to lunches. I don't think any of the girls starved themselves, so they probably snuck double desserts onto their trays or extra bread-rolls.
I always loved the lunch scenes in these books, as being from Australia our school lunch hours were completely different. There was no cafeteria - we ate outside, all around the schoolyard. 90% brought our lunches from home. The other 10% ordered lunch from the tuck-shop, and had to lodge their order earlier in the day at recess so the order would be ready by the time lunch rolled around. And grades 7 to 12 all ate at the same time.
We never had food fights, as the kids were so spread around the school when eating lunch. That why I loved reading about the BSC lunch hour (and other American depictions of lunch hours). BTW, was there ever any food fights in the BSC books?
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Post by booboobrewer on May 16, 2010 23:49:45 GMT -5
I do remember several mentions of the girls being so hungry that they just ignored how bad the food was. Like, they were grossed out by Kristy's jokes but dug in anyway. I'll have to make note of which books they appear in if I come across them again.
It is dumb, but it happened a lot at my middle school, as I recall. People would buy chips and drinks from the vending machines, and that was their lunch. Unhealthy/unsatisfying for sure, but I guess by the time you hit 8th grade it's just not cool to go through the lunch line anymore, and definitely not cool to bring something from home...
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oldhickory
Sitting For The Arnolds
Heather Loves Boys and Gym
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Post by oldhickory on May 17, 2010 0:39:45 GMT -5
for me it was never embarrassing to bring a lunch to school, but it was really inconvenient. you couldn't eat anything that needed to be heated or refrigerated, and if you didn't want to carry it around you had to leave it in your locker on the other side of the school. also (for me personally) half the time i wasn't hungry by the time lunch came around, so in high school i don't think i ate lunch more than 10 times maybe. everybody thought i was anorexic unless they had been sitting with me for a while.
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lilafowler
Sitting For The Johanssens
Posts: 1,163
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Post by lilafowler on May 17, 2010 11:58:54 GMT -5
My middle school had separate lunches for each grade, too, so that part never seemed weird to me.
Jessi and Mallory wouldn't be around for Kristy's disgusting comments, so that could have been why they ate normally and Jessi actually noticed when she didn't get to eat until later than she was used to. But I never got the idea that the other girls were buying lunch just to throw it away. Kristy, Claudia, and Abby especially seem as though they wouldn't really be so disturbed by how gross something looked or what it could be compared to that they wouldn't get over it and eat it anyway. Mary Anne is described as sensitive, but I don't know if that translates to a Margo Pike-esque stomach as well.
I think there was one in Dawn and the School Spirit War. I remember someone hiding a petition during a food fight and can't recall any other petitions with which BSC members were involved.
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celaeno
Sitting For The Papadakis's
I have to share a room with Vanessa
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Post by celaeno on May 17, 2010 13:48:20 GMT -5
Hmmm, I never thought about how much food they wasted. Unfortunately, being really wasteful with food seems like the norm for American teenagers.
During my school experience (public school in the USA), in elementary school (kindergarten to 4th grade) and middle school (5th grade to 8th grade), the different grades always ate at separate times. They definitely would not have been able to all fit in the cafeteria at once.
I was always jealous of the kids who got to buy lunch at school (I guess they seem gross to everyone else, but to me, they seemed cooler and yummier than bringing a brown bag with a sandwich). But my parents were really strict with money and wouldn't let us waste money by buying a purchased lunch when we could make our own.
And yeah, a lot of kids would bring lunch money but just eat french fries or ice cream every single day.
And we never had a food fight in all 13 years I was in school - you would have been instantly suspended if you had participated!
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Post by zoar3 on May 17, 2010 15:22:37 GMT -5
I brought a lunch all through junior high and possibly during my first year of high school. The majority of my JHS memories are not too positive but I can clearly picture a big group of kids (myself included) sitting in a circle on the grass eating lunch. I think Recess (at around 10ish) was called "Nutrition." That simply meant (not Dawn like activities) but a brief interlude to have a snack (that you either brought from home or bought from the cafeteria.) To be honest, I really wasn't all that aware of the cafeteria!
In high school, at least in 10th Grade, my first year, I probably sometimes brought a lunch. By 11th Grade, certainly by 12th, with parents permission you were allowed to go off campus for lunch. Not much time to do this but a lot of people did. I do remember often buying a bagel and cream cheese and chocolate milk in the morning at Recess or whatever it was called. I never was aware there were ala carte options for lunch. You just either paid via school lunch program ticket or cash for whatever "meal" was being served. Being able to separately choose fruit, sandwiches, even fries or ice cream, sound like a much better idea to me.
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blossom114
Sitting For The Papadakis's
Posts: 1,504
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Post by blossom114 on Jun 1, 2010 23:13:40 GMT -5
To be honest, I hated middle school as well..I try and block out as much about it as possible.but I had a meal plan from first grade through eighth so I usually always got the lunch. (I never had extra money so I was never able to get snacks, which SUCKED). I can't really remember not eating most of the food. (Except the spaghetti which was disgusting.) My MS had over 600 students as well, so there was no way we could all fit there in the same time, so we had separate lunch periods... which reminds of something else I realized when I went to middle school (and high school.) we never had a full period for lunch. We had maybe 20-30 minutes to eat. and it was sandwiched somewhere in the day. In high school when they added a third lunch "hour" it was in the middle of a CLASS. (The lunch hours were designated by wherever a certain class was (I can't remember which hour it was...we had A, B and C Days.)
My middle school also had two separate lunch lines where we were designated depending on our last name.
I never thought about how much food was wasted during lunch periods...might be something to keep an eye out for.
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Post by candykane on Jun 5, 2010 9:09:01 GMT -5
I think there was one in Dawn and the School Spirit War. I remember someone hiding a petition during a food fight and can't recall any other petitions with which BSC members were involved. There was a food fight in Super Special #2, only that wasn't at school, of course, it was the one Logan started with the guys at camp. As for the girls and their lunches at school, I never thought they didn't finish eating every time Kristy made a gross food joke. I just assumed they choked it down anyway. Especially Stacey, who was not allowed to skip meals.
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Post by sparklymouse on Jun 5, 2010 13:48:23 GMT -5
Stacey would not be able to eat at least 50% of what is served in an American public school hot lunch program anyway. Everything is frozen, processed, canned, etc.
Weren't Mary Anne and Jessi described as light eaters? They probably didn't eat that much lunch whether they liked it or not. If Dawn brought her own lunch then that leaves Kristy, Claudia and Mallory (and Abby later, but they didn't mention lunch much by the time she got there) eating the lunches consistently. That seems right since they were always the "food" people anyway.
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Post by zoar3 on Jun 5, 2010 18:09:33 GMT -5
^It was said in earlier books that MA didn't have a big appetite. All I remember about Jessi is that she admitted (possibly in Jessi's Secret Language) that while she loved junk food as much as Claudia she tried to limit her intake since she was a dancer. Would have loved to see Jessi indulging and/or standing up to Dawn with Claudia about food.
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oldhickory
Sitting For The Arnolds
Heather Loves Boys and Gym
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Post by oldhickory on Jun 6, 2010 0:08:55 GMT -5
what ever happened to recess? i remember in the early early books (like 7th grade) they had recess if they finished lunch early, but later on they never mentioned it. mallory and jessi at least should have had recess, since the older girls still had recess during 7th grade.
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Post by zoar3 on Jun 6, 2010 17:28:54 GMT -5
Wait, was "Recess" a part of Lunch or separate from it? Like at 2 different times. I remember recess being at like 10am or so and lunch closer to 12 in JHS.
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oldhickory
Sitting For The Arnolds
Heather Loves Boys and Gym
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Post by oldhickory on Jun 6, 2010 17:48:05 GMT -5
well, in KGI they hurry up and finish lunch so they can have extra time for recess, so i always assumed recess was the same time as lunch. that's how it was for me.
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Post by zoar3 on Jun 6, 2010 19:55:18 GMT -5
^You're right, Oldhickory, they did do that huh? Maybe they just had an unamed break earlier in the morning. For me, awful JHS memories are of a separate recess and lunch times. I'm almost positive High School was that way as well.
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