Front Porch Stories: Mom’s Nap and the Lunch Lady
By KATHY BOHANNON, Front Porch Stories
The librarian at Kathleen Mitchell Elementary School in College Park was Mrs. Hughes. We didn’t realize her name was “Hughes”, and assumed it was pronounced Mrs. Shoes. She probably thought many of us had a speech issue when we called out to her.
Long before media centers and computers, our library was hands-on. You had to learn where to find your book. If you asked Mrs. Shoes, you would get a lesson on the Dewey Decimal System, even though she had explained it twice just last week.
Of course, this was before cellphones were in our busy lives. Not a big deal, unless you got left at school.
I am the youngest of four kids, and no doubt mom was tired. She was a housewife, and she was usually in the kitchen cooking up heaven on her stove and in the oven. If she wasn’t cooking, she was putting dishes away, just in time to bring them out again for the next meal. Surely it was this routine or life with four kids and a husband that made her take “The Nap”.
It was “The Nap” that revealed, for the first and only time in my life, that momma met her match. Mom didn’t back down from anyone or anything… until she did.
I recall I was waiting for mom to pick me up at school. All of the kids had left by bus or car, so my teacher sat with me. For some reason, probably because she actually had a life after school, she left and the principal sat with me. About an hour later, Lunch Lady sat down on the brick wall beside me. She had the most questions and though I’m not sure what my answers were, apparently they were not what she wanted to hear.
I heard her say they had called mom “umpty-leven” times and there was no answer. Here in the south, “umpty-leven” was pretty much all you get. I figure mom woke up just in time to cook her six-course meal and only then realized she had slept through pick up time for her youngest. Lunch Lady and I were perched on that brick wall. It was dark. I had most certainly talked her ears off, as that was my true talent. Suddenly, headlights broke the darkness. Mom got out of the car, full of apologies for taking a long nap. That seemed to really light up Lunch Lady. Lunch Lady had already said somebody better be dead, so a nap just wasn’t going to cut it.
She lit into mom, telling her that school had been out for over three hours. She wasn’t going to leave that “poor child” alone and was just minutes from taking her home. My eyes widened as I wondered if her cooking at home was anything like our school lunches.
We rushed to the car. Lunch Lady wasn’t quite finished. She stood in the driveway of the school, yelling at the top of her lungs, arms flailing. Mom hit the gas pedal.
I didn’t find much comfort in knowing that a future naptime might just infringe on school letting out, and the next morning mom gave me a note that explained I was now a bus rider. I stuffed it in my satchel and looked forward to a swift ride home.
To make up for her misstep, mom took me to the grocery store on Saturday and gave me “umpty-leven” quarters for that mechanical horse out front. I rode into the sunset and back again. All was forgiven.
Kathy Bohannon can be reached at [email protected].
