School Lunches

  Sorry for the delayed posting, it's no coincidence that just as school starts my blogging slows down. 2 AP classes, 3 honors classes, studying for the PSATs, studying for the SATs, and dealing with a social life.. Gotta fit blogging in there somewhere. There can be so much stress in school and there can be even more stress in the lunch room. 

  All throughout elementary school and middle school i was assigned the "Nut-Free Table." AKA, the loner table in the corner that was as far away from other tables as possible. I had to sign up which friends would sit with me each week and they had to inform their parents that they couldn't bring any nuts of any sort that week and that they must wash their hands before and after eating with me. 

  In elementary school, i didn't care that i was separated from the other kids, because i still got to sit with my friends. When i was young, it was actually popular to get to sit at the nut-free table because it required a special invitation. My friends now, who weren't my friends in elementary school, always tell me that they always hoped to get invited to the nut-free table and were crushed that they never were. I basically invited the same people every week so no one other than my two best friends at the time had a chance of receiving an invitation. I was like a lunch-time celebrity.

  In middle school that changed, i went basically unnoticed at lunch and no one really gave a shit if they were invited to the special table or not. By middle school everyone had their little cliques, and i had mine, so i always sat with the same people anyway. The table was of course in the corner, far away from all the others so that there was no chance that the air i breathed would be contaminated.
  By the time i was in eighth grade, i started getting angry about having to sit at the god-forsaken nut-free table. I wanted to feel normal. By the end of eighth grade, i ended up sneaking around the lunch-room and sitting at other tables, eventually pissing off the nurse. (I don't always have the best relationships with the school nurses, due to my stubborn attitude.)
  Once i got into high school, as soon as the idea of a nut-free table was mentioned, i shot it down. I was old enough to keep myself safe and there was no way that i was committing the total social suicide that was sticking me and my friends in the corner of the lunch room. 
  I understand the concept of the nut-free table in elementary and middle school, where i was too young to truly understand how to keep myself safe and would've easily caved to peer pressure. In high school i'm more mature and know how to keep myself away from danger. The older i've gotten, the safer i have been able to keep myself and more importantly, the less i have needed the nurse to assign me to a nut-free table.
  Although i hated the nut-free table in eighth grade, i'm sure it helped to keep me safe in the long run. 
  In high school, i may have more independence, but i also have more responsibility to keep myself safe.