Sometimes, only by accident, I meet their eyes with my own. Glossed over, I make out my reflection distorted with a muted hostility. They feel nothing. I feel afraid. It’s not any fault of their own, it’s honestly not even the reality of their feelings, but rather a symptom of my personal guilt. When my eyes un-focus, they are lunch ladies.

Never given the respect they deserve, lunch ladies (I use lunch ladies in the general sense. I suppose I am really referring to lunch people.) are dismissed and not seen as important, nay, crucial to the operation of Lightridge. But who else has the finger on the pulse of the school if not the hard working women who cook our mini corn dogs?

Loudoun County Public Schools serve upwards of 4.5 million school lunches a year, a demand met by the pure dedication of lunch ladies. These women arrive at school before most of us are awake, preparing hundreds of meals to be ready by 11:30 and then distribute those meals to hordes of largely unappreciative students. With few breaks from the onslaught of needy adolescents, the sacrifices of these ladies go mostly unnoticed. However, this issue can be amended.

Once a year we should let the lunch ladies choose one kid from the student body who they then get to punch in the face – really hard.

The benefits of this program are twofold: An increase in morale of the student body, and new found job satisfaction for the lunch ladies.
Tragedy is supposed to bring people together, therefore, manufactured tragedy should yield somewhat similar effects. If students are willing to pay to see a hypnotist performance or boys dance on stage, they’ll definitely pay to see someone take a left hook to the dome – it’s human nature. Not only can the school monetize the event, students will talk about their shared experience for weeks to come.

More importantly, the looming threat of getting punched by a lunch lady will make students be nicer to the lunch ladies because annually choosing one kid to make an example out of creates institutionalized obedience. The lunch ladies will, in turn, experience a calmer work environment with a newfound respect for their profession. Punching a kid also helps lunch ladies blow off some steam, allowing them to let out their rage before returning to normalcy.

Love. That’s what I feel toward America’s finest (lunch ladies). In order to keep them content, and to keep us fed, someone’s got to take one for the team.