those boys

so here's a picture of a typical mountainview lunch. a verbal picture. because it's all i have. we all eat in the pavilion, which is just what it sounds like - a long open sided "building" with a tile roof over the top, located between our secondary and elementary buildings. the elementary kids eat at one end and the secondary kids at the other. there's about 30 picnic tables that span the length of said pavilion in 4 rows, with a walkway in the middle. also, along one side of the pavilion are regular tables. before lunch, students' helpers, drivers, or parents bring their lunch boxes and leave them for the kids on those tables, where the kids retrieve them from and (hopefully) return them to when they are finished.

except for the kids who live in the dorm. we have 3 dorms - the girls dorm, the boys dorm, and the coed southern baptist dorm... those southern baptists. they all eat buffet style. the dorm helpers cook the food and bring it ALL out and each dorm basically claims one picnic table to spread all the food out on. this usually involves a big urn of white rice, a pitcher of juice, a casserole dish full of chicken thighs swimming in oil and hot sauce, a bowl of veggies and garlic, a bowl of fruit, and dish of cookies, and plates, cups, and silverware for everyone.

my job each day is to come to lunch, open up all the dishes (they bring them covered so flies don't get in them), and watch the food for the girls dorm to make sure that other kids aren't just coming and helping themselves. in exchange, i get a free hot lunch. mmm... chicken thighs. not my favorite, but i'm not complaining. it's a free lunch. so i sit there. by the food. usually 3 of the dorm girls sit with me. we're creatures of habit. or at least they are. i sit there every day because it's my job.

there's always some rambunctious boys who come along and try to sneak a cookie out of the dish. one of the costa rican kids is - for reasons beyond me - obsessed with dorm pears. so i gotta keep an eye on the fruit bowl. yesterday i had a kid trade me a half eaten bag of cheetos for a bite of my bacon sandwich. the "cheetos" turned out to be carrot sticks he had shoved in the bag to give it some weight. haha....

anyways, all that to say, something really funny happened at lunch today. four of the boys - juniors and sophomores - who are notorious for every day trying to weasel food came over to the table together. our table is at the very end of the pavilion, at the end of a row of tables. they examined the food for awhile, then one of them declared, "PLACES, EVERYONE!" each boy immediately ran to one corner of our table. and before i knew what was going on, one of them yelled, "LIFT!" and they PICKED UP our picnic table - with four people and all our dishes of food - and carried us to the grass!! then a couple minutes later, they decided they should put the table back where they found it from. so back we went. all without spilling a thing!

and the hilarity of that situation totally made my day.

the end.