Chapter 2: Survival of the Fittest (Cafeteria Edition)

The only difference between my high school cafeteria food and garbage is that the cafeteria actually charges money for theirs.

Every time I walk into the lunch line, I can’t help but think about the dumpsters out back. At least the raccoons eat for free. When the lunch lady hands me a tray, I hold my breath and pray for mercy.

If you tossed it to a dog, even the dog would say, ‘I’d rather go hungry than be humiliated like this. Better to go down with dignity than lose my good name.’

There’s a stray mutt that hangs out behind the gym—everyone calls him Rusty. One time, I tried to give him a leftover meatball, and he turned up his nose like he was above it all. Swear to God, he looked personally offended.

But what dogs won’t eat, they serve to us.

The joke going around school is that if you want to poison someone, just pack them a cafeteria lunch. It’s funny because it’s true.

Meatballs made entirely of fat, two bucks each.

You’d think after last year’s food fight fiasco they’d up their game, but nope. Same old squishy, greasy blobs, sitting under the heat lamps like they’re just waiting for a new victim.

Frozen chicken legs as old as my great-grandma. If I don’t say grace three times before eating, I get scolded for not respecting my elders.

The lunch lady with the hairnet—Miss Pauline—likes to glare if you don’t at least pretend to be grateful. She once told me, "That chicken leg’s seen more of the world than you have, son. Show some respect." I almost laughed, but then the thing jiggled again and I lost my appetite.

If you mixed those chicken legs with eggs, you’d have a family reunion so awkward even Jerry Springer wouldn’t touch it.

Some days, I wonder if they’re running a weird science experiment in the back. Chicken stew with eggs—talk about a twisted family reunion. You half expect the school bio teacher to come out and use it as a lesson on genetics.

The pulled pork is made from pig nipples.

No one actually knows what’s in the pulled pork, but the texture is... suspicious. Last week, Jaden swore he found something that looked like a nipple. He took a photo and now it’s a meme circulating on Snapchat—“#LunchroomHorror.”

I never thought that, after being weaned for over ten years, I’d find childhood memories on a pig.

I laughed so hard I almost choked. Childhood flashbacks, courtesy of the school cafeteria. Some kids joked that next week’s special would be "Mom’s milk surprise." Gross.

I’m really not picky. When I was little, my mom was on a business trip, and my dad brought home a bag of animal feed bran, tricking me into thinking it was imported cereal.

Dad’s the king of dad-jokes and pranks. He poured it in my bowl, topped it with a handful of raisins, and told me it was European superfood. I didn’t even question it—just chewed and swallowed, thinking I was living the high life. That’s how easy I am to please.

I happily ate it for over half a month without a word of complaint.

Every morning, I crunched down that gritty stuff, thinking I was cool. When Mom finally came home, she laughed so hard she had to sit down. To this day, she calls me her little goat.

I’m not saying this to prove my dad doesn’t treat me like a person, but to show my tolerance is stronger than a pig’s.

That’s the thing—some people say kids these days are picky, but I’ll eat just about anything if you tell me it’s food. I’m basically unbreakable, at least when it comes to my stomach.

But cucumber stir-fried with funnel cake, dragon fruit stewed with pickled eggs—these dishes, even a pig wouldn’t eat.

The weird combos keep coming. Some days it feels like the lunch ladies spin a TikTok challenge wheel to decide what gets dumped on our trays. You look at your food and wonder if you’re the star of a viral prank video.

Even pigs would revolt, right?

If there was a pig pen behind the school, I’m pretty sure the pigs would organize a protest. Kids would join in, holding signs: “Feed Us, Not Them!”

I used to think the cafeteria chef’s dream was to become a mad scientist.

All those oddball dishes, every single day, made it seem like we were guinea pigs in some weird culinary experiment. You half expect to see bubbling beakers and someone cackling "It’s alive!"

That’s why they act like some kind of disease-carrying matchmaker, pairing up random ingredients just to see what happens.

Last week, there was mac and cheese with pineapple chunks. The week before that? Hot dog casserole with marshmallows. It’s like they’re just trying to break us.

Later, I found out all these dishes were expired waste from the food factory next door, stuff that needed to be disposed of.

Word got around that the school cafeteria had some "special deal" with the discount food supplier across the street. If it was past its sell-by date, it ended up on our trays. That’s why nothing ever tasted right.

A pot of everything, survival of the fittest, natural selection—the cafeteria’s law of the jungle.

You open the lunch line doors, and it’s every student for themselves. The bold grab the least offensive looking dish, the slow get stuck with whatever’s left. Sometimes it feels like Hunger Games, high school edition.

How do I know?

Heh, I ate a trademark label once.

One day, I bit into a so-called "chicken patty" and spit out a little plastic square that said “Processed 2016.” I held it up and everyone at the table lost it. "Congrats, you win a prize!" they joked.

And then there’s the free soup, a staple in every cafeteria.

It’s the only thing that’s always available, but no one trusts it. People call it "mystery broth" and dare each other to actually drink it.

The blackboard says today’s soup is seaweed and egg drop.

That’s what they write, but you never see an egg, and the seaweed is probably imaginary.

But when you stick your head over the pot, where is it?

You look inside, and it’s just this brownish water with mysterious flecks floating around.

It’s like staring into the abyss.

Seriously, the longer you look, the more you wonder if the soup is looking back. Sometimes the steam fogs your glasses and you feel like you’re in a horror movie.

Maybe they got technical guidance from a ramen factory.

People say the cafeteria manager learned his trade from a discount instant ramen plant. If you listen close, you can almost hear the noodles screaming for help.

One egg passes through three generations; people come and go, but the egg remains.

Every day, the same lonely egg floats in the pot. Legend has it, seniors from five years ago saw that same egg, still bobbing along, undefeated.

Finally, in a hidden corner, I spot a wisp of floating seaweed.

I take a deep breath, dig in with my spoon, and hope for the best.

I fish it up to take a look.

Holding my breath, I stare at the greenish string, praying it’s not alive.

Hahahaha, it’s freaking hair.

That’s when I realize—it’s not seaweed at all. It’s someone’s long, black hair. I gag so hard I almost lose my lunch right there in the line. The lunch lady shrugs, wipes her hands on her apron, and keeps ladling out soup like nothing happened.

Sometimes I think, maybe the school has its reasons for all this.

Maybe there’s a master plan—like building up our immune systems or preparing us for life’s worst-case scenarios. Some kids joke we’ll never get sick after surviving this place.

Like now, whenever I find a foreign object in my veggies, I can tell what it is just by touch.

After a while, you get good at sorting through the weird stuff. One poke and you know if it’s safe to eat or a biohazard.

If it’s soft and springy, it’s a worm. If it’s a little hard, it’s steel wire.

Last week, I pulled out something rubbery and almost barfed. Later, someone found a twist-tie in their beans. The school nurse is on speed dial.

Once I bit into something neither soft nor hard, rough and grainy.

I spit it out and poked at it with my fork, grossed out and kinda curious at the same time.

I spat it out and studied it with my roommate.

We squinted at the thing, passing it back and forth like a science project. It smelled weird, but we were determined to solve the mystery.

Maybe it’s a bean pod, maybe a moldy grain of rice, or maybe a cockroach egg.

We argued about it for half an hour. My roommate said it looked like a mutant raisin. I just hoped it wouldn’t start crawling away.

Self-study in biology, learning through eating.

We joke that eating in the cafeteria is more educational than bio lab. It’s like extra credit for bravery.

The academic atmosphere is really strong.

At least, that’s what we tell ourselves. Maybe we’ll all become scientists out of sheer necessity.

If I’d been born a few hundred years earlier, the author of The Insect Record would definitely have been my classmate.

We’d be famous by now, writing textbooks on weird things found in food. Kids from other schools would come tour our cafeteria just for the horror stories.

What business would Charles Darwin have had here?

Honestly, Darwin should’ve studied us for his survival theories. Natural selection, cafeteria style.