Loser Lunch Crew

It’s not as bad as it reads.
For years, I taught at North High with my wife, eating lunch in her room daily. People would ask, “Isn’t it a pain teaching with your wife?” Nah. I ate lunch with her and saw her in passing. She was always more of a help than a hindrance. She made some tasty lunches and I spent many a day with her. For all of that, WE could be the loser lunch crew.
But we’re not.
That’s the name we used to assign to our “regulars,” the kids who ate with us almost every day. We had a crew of about 10. Some of them were my students; some were the wife’s. I mean, we called them that to their faces–it was our affectionate way, perhaps, of saying we were all kind of losers, but, no matter what, we didn’t want to be around the others at school. Losers, sure, but if that meant we were in the same place together, then it was fine.
We laughed a lot. There were students who talked about movies and music, and I like that because I know a lot about both. Some students had amazing lunches that were made by their folks, so maybe they didn’t want the general school population to desire their food. Others were just groups of friends that wanted to hang out. Very few in the room caused concern for others.
For the last few years, though, the Loser Lunch Crew kind of dissipated. A once-proud group, some of whom spent all four years of high school eating lunch with me and the wife, were now gone and no one took their place. Some kids hung out here and there, but there was no real consistency for the last few years.
Now that my wife is gone from North High, perhaps I’m the only loser left and my students have taken pity upon me. Today I had 22 kids in my room at lunch. Kind of a similar deal, too–a lot of the kids listen to the music I play, or talk about movies, or do homework, or eat, or come in to use my two microwaves. But many of them hang out with each other, friends have been made, and, amidst all the ridiculous that is high school, students have found a place to go at lunch.
I’ve seen things. Kids, my 20+ Loser Lunch Crew, tells stories, and talks to one another. A couple of times–if I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it–students were just hanging out and NOT even coming close to touching their cell phones. Weird, I know. Sometimes, some of the kids don’t have food and, even though the kids in my room at lunch don’t know everyone well, they offer that person food. And they do it without flinching, too, which always gives me a little bit of hope.
That’s what I come back to–kids need a place at school to be themselves. Kids need a place at school where they belong. In an age when every option is being cut from their schedules, and teachers shut their doors on them during lunch and breaks (“that’s our time”), and school just moves from class to class, they need to have something. It doesn’t matter who or what makes up this “something.” What matters is that for a scant 31 minutes per school day, there’s a place that kids know is okay, one where everyone just hangs out, doesn’t cause any trouble or get messed with, and can just have a place to belong.
If that’s my new Loser Lunch Crew, I’m happy to provide. https://youtu.be/4c2Vvp9RIuA