So you're the new kid. The other kids at the other tables whisper. Some may outright laugh. Some throw food (I wish more people had thrown food because its HellaFun(tm) to start a food fight or simply that my mom's packed lunch sucked so I'd have rather thrown it).
I remember moving from Chattanooga, TN to Houston, TX when I was six years old. We moved in August so I wasn't able to make many friends on my street when school started (I'd only met a few kids and they had taken to calling me "Hayseed" ... anyone see the irony here?... I'd busted at least one of their lips .. note to self: not the way to develop friendships).
I vividly remember having to sit at a table by myself the first day of school. Not being a natural joiner (and possessing no grammar skills) I didn't start looking for friends nor was I naturally receptive to people wanting to talk to me. I wouldn't describe myself as the old school version of the trench coat mafia because a) I think highly of myself .. really highly b) I like women and "emo boys" like trench coats are total wussies.
I ended up making friends with Max Cortez, Choo Choo Lawson, Terrance Washington and a few other people that I found out later were considered "unruly". Likely due to the fact that they were from the "Quarters" which was government tract housing put up close to the elementary school where we lived in Sugarland, TX. These people were good as friends and better about having fun, getting into fights, making trouble, and having alot of the same sort of "pig's ass in between two pieces of bread" kinda lunch that I was used to. This set a precedent for me. The people that are the most cast out by their peers tend to stick together themselves. Kind of a band of bad brothers.
Later, after many years, I quit the highschool band my Jr. year of Highschool, I didn't play football, so the only affiliation I kept was Academic Decathlon. So, I was somewhat "unaffiliated" around my Jr and Sr year of highschool. I went to rockstar-like parties at other highschools (Sugar Land is filled with priviledged-bored-rich-kids), dated the Cpt. of the Drill team at another close high school, and went to more Proms than I care to remember (I think the total was 9 after all said and done). However, unaffiliated at my school, I would sit in the lunch room reading the whole time (Stranger in a Stange Land, Xanth Series, Bio of a Space Tyrant, etc). It was only at this point that I made friends with more criminals that my brother was affiliated with (and a few of them were my friends). I believe one of the guys is now a porn star in Austin and a few others I lost track of after they lived in people's attics smoking pot for summers on end.
Uuuuhh was there a point to this?
Well, yeah. I've never been really all that hip on groups. Alot of them are filled with people who like to be nice all the time. I can't hack it. Matter o' fact I find it insipid sometimes (only when I have my man-period or if you prefer "Manly Time of the Month" ... note to self: does anyone make "Man-pons"?). Everyone on the this blog is cool ... some of you are haters very like me.
So imagine my suprise when I feel like the lonely kid at lunch when I didn't get a posting spot in the new rotation! It was clearly horked (my word) by THA MAN(tm)(f the man!!!).
So someone stole my lunch posting spot (very like stealing my lunch ... its pig's ass ... but its mine damnit).
What would you do in my circumstance? What have you done in the past? Is anyone else out there a self-described sociopath like me? Who are you having lunch with? How was Halloween? Were you ever a lonely kid? Most important, What are you stealing for lunch?
30 comments:
Must've been alot of good parties last night. :)
Um, I think I wouldn't whine about it, cuz whiners get the crap kicked out of em. Hehe.
Sometimes people get left off, for no reason other than there are a lot of posters now, and they just get missed. Lady A is only one Lady, and she just slipped. Plus, it's not like someone took your day or anything; you had a day last month.
In the future, if anyone checks the schedule and sees that they're not on, just email Lady A. Or, me or Jo. It's easy enough to fix, and I for one, never mind giving up my day or days.
As for lonely kid lunch, I never had that problem. I actually had the opposite with "warring" groups of girls (and later, boys) wanting to me to sit with them.
Anyway, more importantly than all of this - Paula Deen is on Martha!!!!!!!!!!! LC - I'm DVRing it, I know how you love Paula!!
It's fixed. Diz you have today and the 22nd.
Now take all this self pity energy you've got and GO FIX THE NEW WEBSITE!!!!
I'm really hungry today. Yesterday I had the trio of salads and a ham & brie sandwich. It was very good so I might go down that road again.
did you really post this at 6am? i didn't even see it listed until around ten...
i honestly don't remember much about pre-college lunch. our school was weird due to the insanely small size (graduating class in 98 of 53) for a public school. well, that and there were other issues.
anyway. all i remember was rushing though lunch at the nearest table in order to get outside to "hack" (modern times have renamed this footbagging)..
i've seen this lonely kid syndrome more as an adult (!?) in the work place. Let me further qualify this as in an area where you know no one else.. That first week or so you kinda hang around a couple of coworkers (usually the ones that appear closest to your age group) and a boss or two and then..
as the days pass
you realize
you hate them all.
Then lonely kid lunch can continue, unabated, through your tenure at the company.
lunch at my desk rocks
I spent a lot of time as the New Kid. My dad was an ambitious career federal employee. Consequently, I grew up as kind of a army brat, only we moved every three or four years instead of every year or two.
I even spent some time as the New Kid in Houston back around kindergarten. It wasn't until my brief fascination with the Vietnam War phase around fourth grade (by which time we had moved to Dallas and then coastal Georgia) that I first learned the phrase "FNG," and when I did I wished I had known it all along.
My office is a lot like high school. There are definitely groups that run together, and this often shows itself at lunch time. Oddly enough, today is one of the days when I've been invited to join in on one of those. There's a Pancake House meeting on my calendar this noon. I'm tempted to go because the pancakes are goooood, but it's going to come with about a dozen clowns. Don't get me wrong. I like some of them - possibly even a majority of them - but I've made my views on the large-group meal out clear before. Pain in the ass, no matter how well my pancakes are buttered. On the upside, the organizer is a recovering waitress so she usually does a pretty good job of keeping the whole mess from jumping the tracks so I might get over it.
If I do, then definitely blueberry pancakes with a side of bacon.
In short, I definitely show some sociopathic tendencies. Which is to say, I hate people.
I spent my Halloween in the back of the house with the lights off so I wouldn't get any bullshit kids ringing my doorbell and expecting free shit. About halfway through prime trick-or-treating time (also halfway through my viewing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show), I realized that nobody trick-or-treats in my neighborhood: the kids who don't live there don't go to my neighborhood, the kids who DO live there go trick-or-treat at the mall or somewhere else, and all of the gay couples around me don't have kids.
I hid anyway.
I was the new kid at the Montessori School in okemos when I was 5. The KKKK (Kindergarten Ku Klux Klan)arranged a "spit on jo" session halway through my first day.
I didn't return and spent the next 13 years in public school.
I still hate Okemos.
i totally imagine little diz all sitting by his lonesome. LOSER! ;-)
actually, i remember once in junior high when someone randomly decided to launch a hate campaign against me, and i sat by myself for a couple of lunches. it really sucked ass. the random hate campaign is why teenage girls are just horrible horrible people.
once i got to high school, i was too busy in extracurricular crap during lunchtime that i didn't have to worry about who to sit with. plus, i learned the art of having multiple groups of friends so that i never could be the scapegoat of one group ever again.
today, im at home and eat leftover chicken sammie from el pollo sabroso that lady a, qweefy and me picked up last night on the way home. it's been sitting on the counter all night long so that i can honor lady a's tradition. can't wait to dig into that goodness. perhaps it'll help get rid of this damn cough.
HT -- thx for dvring paula for me! she rules.
Wow Jo...that is a little disturbing...I hope we don't run into those kids at Angles cause we would totally kick their asses!!!
I lived in the same house during my entire child/teenage-hood so I never had to deal with the FNG status. Now as an "adult" I prefer to eat lunch alone during the work day,I like that brief "me time" so I can read or do a crossword.
I'm at home today so I'm not sure what lunch will be. I didn't eat my sandwich from last night (pollo sabrosa chicken sandwich) so I'll munch on that I'm sure. I also hard boiled an egg for breakfast...it's almost 11...I should eat that soon.
eating chicken sandwich for breakfast...I'll have to do something with the egg for lunch. Maybe a sandwich with turkey bacon.
I moved from Detroit to Ann Arbor when I was in 6th grade, and entered a K-6 school where all the kids had pretty much been together since they were 5.
There were two major clicks in the school:
The Goody-Goodies
The Baddy-Baddies
This is totally serious and i'm not making it up, they referred to themselves as such. The Goody-Goodies were the larger group and included all the popular kids and pretty much all the girls, the Baddy-Baddies were the "rough" kids, all boys.
When the Baddy-Baddies heard I was from Detroit they recruited me on the premise that I must be tough. But I was more interested in the Goody-Goodies because there were a couple cute girls.
I ended up somewhere in between, never fully accepted by the Goods or the Bads. I think most of the Baddy-Baddies are now dead or in jail, so I probably did well not to join them.
Yeah, I'm with Lady A - alone is better 99.99999999999% of the time. Other people suck, in general. Booooooooo on other people.
I moved to Michigan from Mexico halfway through first grade.
I didn't fit in or fit out, I guess at that age you don't really know what's going on, so I wasn't lonley, but SOme things that the kids did, or rather held as right really seemed backwards and wrong to me.
First, they wouldn't share or accept a piece of food that had been bitten. WTF?
Also they threw out food that had been in contact with, not only the floor, but the tabletop.
Coming from Mexico, I was apalled at their ability to waste food, and their aversion to germs. Fucking pussies.
Today i am going to be forced to take an hour lunch since the joint I am temping at this week is more structutred than the one last week.
I'm in Time Warner's Government relations office, and the building is awesome. I am currently overlooking the Whitehouse from the 12th floor. Best view I have ever seen in DC.
I just find it funny that many kids didn't just judge you on your clothing but also the lunches you brought.
YOU'RE BEING JUDGED!!!
In all honesty I thought it was a good topic. Sorry if I hurt anyone's feelers.
Regardless, I think that was the point. I like eating alone alot. I was just wondering if I could get anyone else to admit it.
HT - I guess you're just more cool than me. I think it has to be some sort of cosmic inverse equation to the like of computers.
Jo- M has totally offered up his talents. I'll be honest ... you're problem seems to be that the new website software probably came from that Montessouri school. :)
PeeP was never lonely b/c he was whoring his luscious ass out to all the boys and priests at school.
"Yes, father, I WILL have another!"
Diz, I too admit to enjoying solo lunches. I like to go outside on nice days, read the paper, and eat my lunch. Its a nice mental break, and allows me to catch up on things i'm interested in.
Sometimes I run into somebody I know and my solo lunch is blown, so often I go to areas where I know will be quiet.
Hurray for solo lunches!
so our cafeteria is serving rancid sausage and pepper hoagies (erm.. heros) today so i went with the hi-cal-lo-fiber lunch..
nacho cheese flavoured doritos (super sexy)
a half moon cookie (curiously labeled "Black and white cookie)
and
get this
fresca
i havent had one since i was much younger and let me tell you..
it tastes like ass.. god, i don't remember disliking it at all at my last sampling but this... THIS... is horrid.. its flavored with that most vile of artifical sweetners... aspertame..
god.. i think i just vomited a little in my mouth
nope.. that was just leftover fresca taste
wd: "I go to areas where I know will be quiet." I love the smokescreens you come up with to hide your penchant with back-alley handjobs.
Lady A: Sorry I missed out on buying today's lunch with you last night. Got home and passed out about fifteen seconds later.
Shoot.
Penchant for...for.
ham and brie with lto and honey mustard on a baguette from Vie De France.
pasta salad on the side.
root beer to drink.
Just got back from my penchant with, what was it WITH again??
ANyhoo, had a solo lunch from market to market. Eaten at the National Police Memorial. A place where they honor the dead is usually nice and quiet.
Speaking of back-alley handjobs, has anyone seen Shorty around the DC neighborhood lately? Shorty being the black midget crackhead known to exchange BJ's for crack. Hope he's not dead...
watchdog I thought you meant our shorty...wife of e-que...
Saw Reno after lunch today. That's twice in one week. Dang!
Sesame chicken, and a bit of everything else on the steam table at the building at Farragut with the awesome fountain inside it.
The Pinger and I wer just wondering about shorty the other day too.
Snap! WD, remember the midget on the mini bike? That was easily the funniest thing I have ever seen on the street.
shite.. that's right miso... i've hated the general public forever huh?
all this midget talk...were some of you watching nip/tuck last night?
horray midgit lovin!
i'd been cheering for that moment all season... i'm still grinning at the realization of such a prayer
Woah. Devil's night gets exporded.
It seems the Baddie Bads in Saginaw are trying to bite Rock City's style.
But they got the wrong date. Them foolz did it last night.
Everybody knows that 10-30 is the night to burn things. Geesh.
Diz you're in Houston ain't you?
CNN just showed a poll that y'all are the going out to eatinest MF'ers in the country.
I'd like to listen, but I'm the fucking receptionist today and don't think i can turn anything on.
If there were a Temp Worker's Union, we could bond together and fight for the right of our downtrodden brethren to listen to music at their desks.
Jo, get on it man... for real.
I now expect everyone to actually give me an answer at some point. HT slid by earthquake and m answered admirrably, Jo .. kinda weak ... I'll give you points for humor and sharing some pain with us. Miso copped out .. totally.
I expected an all out "Soap Operah" (Iknowitscatchy) today.
Totally disappointed.
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