I went to a Catholic
elementary school run by strict Belgian nuns, and we could not leave the
cafeteria until we ate everything served on our food tray. Once a week, they
served warmed, canned spinach with our meal.
The spinach tasted
nothing like the way my grandmother made it, but I ate it. I gulped it down in
three or four bites and it amazed my table mates. I told them we ate it at home
so I was used to the taste.
Now, my real problem
began the day I ate the spinach off my friends’ trays so we could go play
outside. As soon as the nun monitoring the cafeteria turned her back, my
friends ate something off my tray I didn’t want, and I ate their serving of
spinach. I only did it for two of my table mates, but the word spread.
On the next Spinach Day, kids
followed me to my table. I was suddenly
very popular, and as soon as the nun marched off to the other end of the
cafeteria, my friends and an army of others who only knew me as The Girl Who
Eats Spinach, begged me to take their serving. The food on my tray disappeared
and I ended up with a mound of spinach. I had no choice but to eat it if I
wanted to leave the cafeteria, but when others attempted to give me more, I snapped
at them.
The following Spinach
Day, my tray became the spinach dumping ground. No one asked if they could do
it; they just dumped their spinach onto my tray, covering all the other food in
a green mound of warmed-over yuck. I snapped.
I flung spinach at all the trays around me. I yelled so loud that it
alerted the nun monitoring the cafeteria that day.
Sister Mary Godzilla swooshed
over in her robes, took one look at my tray, and realized what had happened. She
called the cafeteria ladies over and made sure that everyone around me who did
not have a serving of spinach on their tray got a fresh, new, generous serving.
Some groaned their innocence, insisting they had already eaten their spinach,
but she didn’t care. She stood over them and watched as they ate their spinach.
As for me, she asked if I wanted a clean tray of food, and when I said no, she smiled
at me and let me leave the cafeteria.
I went from The Girl Who Eats
Spinach to The Snitch Who Got Us into Trouble, but I didn’t care. I never
offered to eat anyone’s spinach again, and no one dared to ask, obviously
thinking I might snap at any slight provocation.
One Spinach Day not long
after, I turned in my empty tray to the custodian and he nodded toward a little
boy about eight years old sitting at a table by himself. Sister Mary Godzilla
had just walked away from him, and he was crying. The custodian and I made eye
contact, and I gave him a nod. Keeping an eye on Sister Mary Godzilla, I nonchalantly
walked over, picked up the kid’s fork and ate the glob of spinach on his tray
in two bites, then walked away into the sunset, like the good guys in westerns.
(cue: cowboy music)
Yes, I have a gift. I am
one of the few who can eat canned spinach, but I choose with whom I share this
gift.
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