Y’know how there’s that scene in almost every teen movie when they explain the lunchroom and the all the social dynamics?
I can’t really do that scene, because well, I never actually ate in my high school’s lunch room. When I was a freshmen, the lunch room was nicknamed the “mushroom.” The message that we got as freshmen, or at least I got was to find somewhere else to eat. I don’t know if it was because it was too small, but it was not a welcoming place.
People found corners of the school to eat. Students would eat in hallways, or outside. I had two other people I was friends with in middle school. We found a place to eat near locker bays by the orchestra room. One of the friends got into the social dynamics of his sports team so he went to eat with them, and other one would eat with other friends, so there was a time that I ate lunch by myself.
It sucked on a level, but in some ways, I preferred it. I’m not great in large groups or at parties now, and I wasn’t back then. I didn’t know how to take the chance and unlike college, no one really took me under their wing to help me navigate the lunchroom situation. However, I knew that this wasn’t right. Not just because of society told me that friends were important, but because I wanted to have a group...and sometimes I was lonely.
In middle school I had a group of 7th graders when I was in 8th grade that I felt were a group I belonged to, but I didn’t have them with me in high school. The fact that I spent so much time with them in middle school meant that I didn’t really build relationships with kids my own age. Everyone else seemed to have their group. I didn’t know how to find that, and it was easier to not try than to take a chance. That could have been it for me, sitting by myself eating lunch outside in the locker bay or in the back hallway by the orchestra room for my entire time in high school…and that was pretty much it for me my freshmen year.
When I joined band my sophomore year (which is a whole different story), I noticed that a group of people ate lunch in the band office. The office comfortably fit maybe three people but we managed to fit sometimes as many as six. The band teachers would often let us hang there, and even sit at their desks. Sometimes they would kick us out, but more often than not they would let us have the space to hang out.
Some days it would be me and one other person, and other days it would be full. There were people there like me who sometimes felt more of a connection with people who weren’t their own age, and other people simply felt something important being in the space and presence of these teachers.
That’s where I ate lunch sophomore through senior year. There were not always people in that office but I never felt lonely being alone in that space because I felt like I belonged. This was more important to me than trying to navigate the lunchroom or being cool. It was the “dorky” thing to do to hang out with the band folk in a teacher’s office for lunch every day, but it was all I could figure out. I didn’t feel great about how this made people perceive me, but it was all I had.
Sometimes having something that marks you by others as less than, but make you feel belonging is a choice we have to make. It would be a choice I would continue to make the rest of my life, and it was a choice that eventually made look forward to lunch time and having a moment that I could be myself.
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