Eat Everything on Your Plate!

 

I started grade school in 1960.  We lived in a small town in northern Indiana.  I don't recall what grade I was in when the following occurred, but I believe that I was in the second or third grade.

They were very strict at my school about eating all the food that you were given for lunch.  There were no exceptions given.  Teachers were savvy to every attempt to hide food in milk cartons, up the sleeve of your sweater. . . etc.  

I hated.  I hate to this day canned spinach.  The school lunch menu was mimeographed and posted a week in advance, so the dreaded spinach day was no surprise.  On those days, the school janitor took to standing with a little can of sawdust in the lunch room, awaiting my arrival at the lunch line, and my getting sick to my stomach when the spinach as placed on my plate.

It became such a problem, that I ended up having to eat my lunch in the school principles office, at his desk.  All this was unbeknownst to my parents, until one Sunday evening, my Mom asked me if I was ready for school the next day, and I immediately became upset, and vomited there at home.  It was then that she learned what was happening with me and my lunchtime trauma.  It was never mentioned, so I don't know what transpired between my Mom and school, but I don't remember being forced to eat everything on my lunch plate at school anymore.

It was such a trying thing. . . I've grown into an active adult, with no discernable health problems from missing eating canned spinach.  I can kind of understand the rationale, but surely the stress imparted by this outweighed any nutritional benefit the spinach might have offered.

Kids have different tastebuds than adults.  I can remember the strong flavors of certain vegetables as a kid, that I now enjoy eating. . .but not canned spinach. . . in over sixty years since my grade school days I've never partaken of it.