Lunch Duty

I volunteered for cafeteria duty at J's kindergarten on her birthday. Seeing my deer in the headlights look, other parents and teachers came over to show me how I could help. There were little packets of milk and juice to open, silverware and napkins to hand out but to ensure the kids finished everything on their plate was not part of my brief or anyone else's for that matter.

So at the end of lunch break, a huge mountain of food made of pizzas, fruit with whipped cream topping, granola bars, juice and sausages formed in the trash bin. On an average every third child was throwing away more than half of what they had either brought or bought ( though sometimes the difference was hard to tell) for lunch. That the teachers who were monitoring them said nothing of the waste was simply astounding to me.

Here was opportunity to teach these impressionable young children about conservation, living green, sharing the planet's meager resources - the basic math of waste at least - as in how many children dying of starvation could feed on the food in that trash pile and get a chance at life. No one there would know or understand how my Indian soul grieved that afternoon.

J knows not to waste anything thanks to my belaboring the point to death with her. But there are no reinforcing messages coming forth from any other authority figures. Whereas, she has used the same box of crayons for the first five years of her life, her kindergarten supplies list needs her to have a dozen pencils for an academic year. As much as I resented the idea, I had to acquiesce.

It will be increasingly difficult for me to advocate a Spartan existence amid such excess and wastage.