Nothing brings out the grumpy
in aging boomers like me than comparing our childhoods with kids today. Of course, we notoriously grouse about
them spending all their time on their phones
and devices instead of interrelating or playing outside. But of course, they have never
been allowed to be
the free range kids like us who could roam our neighborhoods and towns totally unsupervised, play happily on bone-breaking
playgrounds, carry knives and even firearms, and bounce around in the back of pick-up
trucks. Waves kidnapping
panics and scolding never-let-a-child-take-a-risk nags have wiped that all
away. Now kids can’t play in their own yards without a protective, hovering adult, wear all sorts of safety equipment, and
must be protected from even the most remote health risk. See? Don’t get me started!
And it’s not just us geezers. I have seen Facebook posts from Gen Xers who spent their
childhood in the ‘90s lamenting the lost freedoms of their youth at shopping malls and endless telephone calls.
One thing that gets us going is school lunch. Attempts to make hot
lunches more nutritious have been going on for decades now with mixed success. As an elementary school custodian one of my jobs was to supervise the garbage
cans in the cafeteria. I watched full trays being dumped uneaten with good-for-you salads and vegetable medflies. Instead, the kids scarfed
down the slab of greasy cheese pizza they were allowed once a week and the occasional rubbery
hot dog or over-cooked burger
patty on a stale bun.
I was also tasked
with physically handing a milk carton to each child in the hot meal line whether they wanted one or not. They could choose a 2% white milk or a 1% chocolate. About three
quarters of them took the chocolate. Many of the white milk cartons
were dumped un-opened.
I understand there is a new
push to ban chocolate milk in Federally subsidized
lunch programs as part of the battle
with childhood obesity. Like so many well-meaning
programs it targets the poor who rely on free lunches while better off parents
pack lunches for their kids with stuff they will actually eat.
Poet Kim Dower weighed in on the topic. She was born and raised in New York City and earned a BFA from Emerson College, where she has
also taught creative writing. She is the author of four collections of poetry from Red
Hen Press—Air Kissing on
Mars in 2010; Slice
of Moon in 2013, nominated for a Pushcart Prize; Last Train to the
Missing Planet in 2016; and Sunbathing
on Tyrone Power’s Grave in 2019, which won the IPPY Award for best poetry book of the year. Dower’s poems have been featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac where I discovered this poem and Ted
Kooser’s American Life in
Poetry, as well as in many journals, magazines, and anthologies. She was Poet Laureate of West Hollywood from 2016 to 2018 and teaches at Antioch
University.
They’re Taking Chocolate
Milk Off the Menu
They’re Taking Chocolate
Milk Off the Menu,
and that’s only the
beginning.
I hear other junk food is at
risk:
brownies, pastries, name it,
they’re removing it, the
only chance
fifth graders have at
happiness.
The only thing I looked
forward to
was chocolate milk,
especially after
getting yelled at by Miss
Paniotoo.
I once poured a carton over
her “in”
box, watched the ink bleed
down
the equation-filled pages,
blurring
the names of my classmates,
never told anyone, not even
Donna Nagy,
and now they’re taking it
off the menu.
What will our kids be forced
to do?
Will they devour each other?
Eat one another's faces, run
across
the handball court sword
fighting
with dry straws, wasted with
desire?
Word just in they’re even
removing
strawberry milk. We never
had that.
I’m sure it didn’t smell
like the chocolate:
a little sour like yesterday’s
dessert.
We had to drink it before it
turned,
when it was still cold
enough
that even our mittens couldn’t
protect us.
—Kim
Dower
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