By DR. LARRY MOSES
No one asked me but… School has started. The best thing we who live in the desert southwest have to mark the seasons is the opening and closing of school.
I was raised in Iowa where fall was marked by the turning of leaves, winter by the snowfall, spring by the new growth and summer by hot muggy days.
Our major seasons here are not that easily marked. Fall is marked by the return of the kids to school, Winter by the return of the snowbirds, Summer is marked by the close of school and the roar of motor homes heading back to Idaho, Montana, and Utah.
Moms can now take a deep breath, as they will have peace and quiet for seven hours a day. Kids will once again be greeting friends and begin to fall into the routine of backpacks, books, and school lunches.
School lunches are dear to my heart for I went to school to play football and eat lunch. I was much better at the latter.
The day when the school lunch was a meal prepared at the local cafeteria by local cooks has gone the way of the dinosaur. The school’s cook with the orthopedic hose, hair net, and the disposition of an angry mother grizzly bear is gone. I can remember the mashed potatoes with creamed chicken, which was a favorite of mine.
My mother insisted I take a lunch, because she was not going to put out a quarter a day. I soon found that I could get a free lunch if I helped serve and immediately applied. Since it was uncool to be a server the competition was not too great.
I soon donned a hair net. But I found myself fired because I ate more than I served.
Of course, I still had to make a lunch because I was afraid to tell my mother I was working as a server, as that was the sign you were poor. We definitely were not poor and my mother hated anything that might suggest we were. However, I much preferred the school lunch to that which I could bring from home.
The peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which was the last minute answer to putting the school lunch together, has been banned since peanuts have become more lethal than nuclear radiation. It is amazing how many of us grew up on this staple and are still up and kicking. It must be another example of the ‘wussafication’ of America. How are we to stand against the invasion of world powers when our kids crumble at the smell of a peanut butter sandwich? Those who denied that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction over-looked the mass of peanut butter that country had collected. The threat was real, folks.
We are also no longer to use brown paper bags as the eco-nuts have decided that it will destroy the forest of America.
Not only that, but all lunch boxes must be violence neutral. Those Roy Rogers metal pails would never make it today because Roy was always armed. In some California school districts, parents are advised that if the Power Ranges, or any of their friends, are on lunch boxes they will be confiscated under the zero tolerance policy.
In one Chicago school district, lunches from home are examined by school officials, and food not found acceptable is confiscated and replaced with food items the school deems appropriate. Notes of reprimand are sent to parents. One school official was appalled that the student was sent with two chocolate bars along with their ham and cheese sandwich. They indicated to the mother that she was negligent in the care of her child. Negligent? I am putting her in for the mother of the year. I never got one candy bar let alone two.
A few years ago, the food Nazis in Clark County pressured the board into removing sodas from the campus vending machines. They also attacked the candy bars and M&Ms that were being dispensed.
This had two major effects on the school. First, it cut into school funds as the profits from the machines were used for various student activities. Secondly, it opened up a black market among the students when enterprising students began to sell the counter-ban items out of their lockers.
You have to love kids. I suppose it was a great lesson in the capitalist system that most of these effete food Nazis abhor.
The high school cafeteria is becoming obsolete which makes me wonder where the social structure of the high schools is now displayed. It was in the cafeteria one learned whether he was cool or not. Those who are as old as I will remember the cool girls and guys sat in one area. Athletes often had their area and then there was a place for the rest of us.
While I was a football player, I never encroached on either the athlete or cool area. I lived on the other side of town and never really established many ties with anyone in the high school. To this day, I really don’t see much adverse effect on my life.
It did however make it so I did not have the lemming-type drive that forces people to the 20th, 25th, and 50th reunion of their graduating class. The old “do or die for old North High” never really took a hold of my soul.
Of course, it might be that it is hard to sell your soul to a school whose colors are pink and green. Yes, I said pink and green; you want to make something of it?
As for you graduates of Moapa Valley High School who will be Pirates for life and may bleed Blue and Gold, more power to you. I will not bleed pink and green and die a polar bear.
As the school year opens, I have nothing but best wishes for the students, parents, teachers, and administrators of our local schools.
The Moapa Valley Rotary fed the area teachers a well-deserved breakfast for the tenth year in a row. It was a great start to what I hope will once again be a great year for some of the best schools in America.
Thought of the week… Labor Day is a glorious holiday because your child will be going back to school the next day. It would have been called Independence Day, but that name was already taken.
– Bill Dodds
