Silent Lunch

I put a picture of Nick's on the refrigerator the other day. It depicts "the wite wich in hr sled" and Aslan. Yes, we've been reading the Narnia books. But that's not what I want to talk about. After I put the picture up Nick told me that he'd drawn it during "silent lunch." Apparently some Thursdays lunch is silent. I'm not sure if this is a desperate effort by the cafeteria workers to regain their sanity, or a pedagogical plot by the teachers, but it amuses me. I had heard of "silent lunches" before this year and they always sounded bad. Why make kids be quiet while they eat? Eating and talking are two of the great civilized pleasures, best practiced together. We were definitely nay-sayers.

But silent lunch this year is a little different. In the past the kids had to keep quiet and weren't even allowed to gesture or pass notes to each other. This year there's paper and pencils in the cafeteria and they can write notes. So when Nick thought C. was being mean he wrote her a note: "your mean." It got passed around, and she wasn't happy about it, but at least he was communicating.

Apparently M. wrote a note that said "your butt smells," and got in trouble for it. I tried to figure out why. Was it just the word? (Mariah was once punished for talking about Beavis and Butthead, because talking about them entailed saying the b-word.) Was it that it was mean? It couldn't be that it was because it wasn't true...

In any event I think it's fine that they're passing notes. Last year they couldn't even write their own names. Now they're writing, they're communicating, they're using their words. And if what they want to use them for is to tell each other how smelly they are, well, it's better than fighting, isn't it?

(PS--I also love that M. had to ask Nick how to spell his note.)